In this bulletin:

• President Karzai Condemns the Killing of Turkish Engineer
• Afghan President to visit India from April 9
• Afghan govt. introduces new cabinet to parliament for approval
• Afghanistan firmly with Palestinians, says president's FM choice
• No set date for NATO's command of coalition in Afghanistan: US
• U.S. Sponsors Seminar for Afghanistan-Pakistan Border Security
• Afghan police kill suicide bomber
• Afghan battle probed for possible "friendly fire"
• Senior Canadian commander says Afghanistan is not Canada's Iraq
• Afghanistan debate needed, Layton says
• Pakistani Taliban gaining strength
• All seminaries at Afghan refugees camps in Pak province shut down
• Mines still kill or maim 100 people a month in Afghanistan
• Afghanistan to be cleared of mine within 7 years
• Australia, Netherlands to share embassy in Kabul
• AIB launches Internet banking facility

President Karzai Condemns the Killing of Turkish Engineer - Date of Release: 03 April 2006

Arg, Kabul – H.E. Hamid Karzai, President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, strongly condemned the killing of a Turkish engineer in the province of Farah.

In his reaction to the news the President said, “This barbaric act of terrorism by the enemies of Afghanistan revealed their hidden agenda to the people of Afghanistan. Afghans will never waver in their determination to rebuild their country. The foreign mercenaries must understand that their defeat is inevitable.”

“The people of Afghanistan thank the brotherly people and Government of the Republic of Turkey for their assistance to the reconstruction of Afghanistan. This assistance is vitally important for a stable and prosperous Afghanistan.”

The President ordered the relevant authorities to identify the perpetrators of this heinous act of terrorism and bring them to justice.

The President, on behalf of the people of Afghanistan, expressed his heartfelt sympathies and condolences to the family of the victim and to the brotherly people and Government of the Republic of Turkey.

Released by the Office of the Spokesman to the President - Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

Afghan President to visit India from April 9 - Apr. 4, 2006 India Daily

Afghan President Hamid Karzai will undertake a week-long visit to New Delhi from April 9 to further consolidate the ties between the two countries. During the trip, he will hold talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on a wide range of bilateral issues and regional and international issues of mutual concern. The two leaders are expected to review the progress of reconstruction and developmental projects beng implemented by India in the war-torn country.

Afghan govt. introduces new cabinet to parliament for approval

KABUL, Apr 3, 2006 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- The Afghan government on Monday introduced the 25 members of proposed new cabinet to the Wolesi Jirga, or National Assembly, with hope to get vote of confidence.

"On behalf of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan it is a matter of pleasure for me to introduce the proposed members of new cabinet to you, the esteemed parliamentarians, and wish you approve it," Vice President Ahmad Zai Masoud told the house. Majority of the new proposed ministers are old faces serving in the sitting provisional cabinet.

The only key figure of the provisional cabinet is Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah who has been replaced with Rangeen Dadfar Spanta, a former academic and advisor to president on international affairs, while ministers on defense, finance and interior have been holding their portfolios in the new proposed cabinet.

Spanta in a brief chat with journalists said he was hopeful to win vote of confidence from the majority of the MPs (Members of Parliament) at the Wolesi Jirga.

The Wolesi Jirga is going to give vote of confidence to the proposed cabinet members within days as discussion over the modalities of voting to the cabinet members is going on among the deputies in the 249-seat house.

"I hope the Wolesi Jirga members to decide about the giving vote of confidence to the proposed members of the new cabinet as soon as possible," House Speaker Mohammad Yunus Qanooni emphasized.

Afghanistan firmly with Palestinians, says president's FM choice - Apr 4

KABUL (AFP) - Israel's return of occupied land to the Palestinians remains a pillar of Afghanistan's foreign policy, President Hamid Karzai's choice for new foreign minister said.

Karzai has picked Rangeen Dadfar Spanta to replace outgoing Abdullah Abdullah as foreign minister, but the appointment has yet to be approved by parliament.
Spanta was introduced to MPs on Monday with 24 other ministers ahead of debates on their appointments.

He told parliament that as minister he would reform the foreign ministry, including the process of selecting ambassadors. The centrepiece of the ministry's foreign policy would be the return of Palestinian land, he said on Monday.

"What the people of Palestine and their representatives want, that is what the people and the government of Afghanistan want," Spanta said. "I want that Palestinians have a very strong government and eastern Jerusalem be their capital."

"To give the territories back to Palestinians is the centre of our foreign policy," Spanta added. Islamic Afghanistan does not have diplomatic ties with the Jewish state.

The government was quick to reject media reports in February that Afghan officials had held talks with their Israeli counterparts on the sidelines of a London conference on aid to Afghanistan.

No set date for NATO's command of coalition in Afghanistan: US - 4/3/06

KABUL (AFP) - It is difficult to say when NATO will take command of the coalition force in Afghanistan, the US ambassador said, after a top NATO general said the handover could be completed by August.

NATO peacekeepers, currently based in northern and western Afghanistan, have started moving into the south, in a stage called phase III, to take over from a separate US-led coalition force.

They are later due to move into the east, in phase IV, to take command of the entire foreign force that is trying to stabilise the war-ravaged country, including by fighting a Taliban-led insurgency and the massive drugs trade.

NATO's top military commander in Europe, US General James Jones, said Friday the expansion could be completed by the end of August. But US ambassador Ronald Neumann said this could be optimistic.

"There is an ongoing discussion about exactly when we get towards what's called phase IV which is where the American command then merges under NATO," Neumann told reporters.

"Phase IV does not have a fast time attached to it yet. It could be August, it could be November," he said. Several technical matters must be sorted out before the merger, such as the establishment of a headquarters, Neumann said.

NATO took command in 2003 of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) that had been in the country since the ouster of the Islamist Taliban government in a US-led operation in late 2001.

ISAF was first in the north and then moved into the west, with both areas seeing relatively little of the violence that has claimed hundreds of lives in the insurgency hit south and east.

Jones said phase III could be completed by July. Once the merger had been completed, the force would comprise between 23,000 and 25,000 troops, he said.

The expansion of the NATO force, which currently numbers about 10,500 troops from 36 countries, will allow the United States to cut its deployment from about 19,000 to about 16,500 troops.

U.S. Sponsors Seminar for Afghanistan-Pakistan Border Security

Officers from both countries meet at Marshall Center in southern Germany - US STATE GOVT - http://usinfo.state.gov

Washington -- Afghan and Pakistani military officers met for two weeks in Germany in March for a U.S.-sponsored seminar to discuss ways better to patrol the complex border between their two countries, a rugged tribal area that harbors terrorist fighters.

The seminar ran from March 19 to March 31 at the George C. Marshall Center for Security Studies in Garmisch, Germany. The U.S. Defense Department facility was chosen for its neutral, academic environment where eight officers from each of the two countries could meet "to discuss issues of mutual concern and learn more about terrorism," according to a Marshall Center news release.

The center plans to hold two such seminars each year for the next five years to build up a cadre of Afghan and Pakistani border officials who know each other personally and can cooperate better to stem the flow of illegal border traffic. The seminar is co-sponsored by the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies.

NATO’s International Security Assistance Force gradually is taking over security duties in Afghanistan. This allows the U.S. military increasingly to focus on combat operations in southeastern Afghanistan, where enemy fighters sympathetic to the former ruling Taliban have sought refuge in the remote inter-tribal region. (See related article.)

Senior military authorities from Afghanistan and Pakistan already meet regularly as part of a Tripartite Commission that also includes the representatives of the international coalition forces in Afghanistan. The last Tripartite Commission meeting took place February 25 at Bagram, Afghanistan, and the next is scheduled to take place in April in Pakistan, according to a February 27 news statement by the Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan.

The seminar at the Marshall Center in Germany was conceived as a way to complement the Tripartite Commission by allowing lengthy meetings of military officers from both countries who are involved in day-to-day operations in the border region.

Nick Pratt, a Marshall Center professor who specializes in terrorism and security studies, said the Afghanistan-Pakistan border is "really tricky" because members of individual tribes live on both sides of the border and "don’t give a hoot about this imaginary line" dividing the two countries. The tribal area has been a refuge to members of the Taliban, the former rulers of Afghanistan who harbored Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born militant linked to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Some foreign fighters have been in the rugged tribal region so long they have married into families that span both sides of the border, Pratt said in an April 3 Marshall Center news release. Those family ties are combined with a code of chivalry that includes giving sanctuary to fugitives, making Western-style border controls difficult, Pratt said.

Pakistan Army Lieutenant Colonel Kahlil Dar, who attended the seminar, said the two weeks of meetings allowed Pakistanis and Afghans to live and work together. They’ve also had a chance to "roam around" together in southern German towns to "observe how tolerance is embedded in the developed part of the world," Dar said. These trips have "been a great stimulant for us," Dar said, according to the Marshall Center release.

Afghan police kill suicide bomber – Reuters 04/03/2006

KANDAHAR - Afghan police shot and killed a suicide bomber as he approached a police chief visiting a shrine on Monday and a bystander was killed by a stray bullet, police said.

It was the second attack on police in the southern province of Kandahar in 24 hours and the fourth attack by a suicide bomber since Thursday. Violence in the Afghan south was already at a high level but intensified last week when the Taliban announced they had launched a spring offensive.

Police shot the suicide bomber as he approached the district police chief at the shrine on the outskirts of Kandahar town, said provincial governor Assadullah Khalid. Explosives were later found on him, police said. A man visiting the shrine was killed by a stray bullet, police added.

On Sunday night, Taliban gunmen on motorbikes mounted a raid on a police post outside a Kandahar jail. Witnesses said four policemen were killed and three wounded. Khalid initially said five policemen were wounded. He and other officials later declined to comment.

The Taliban were ousted by U.S. and Afghan opposition forces in late 2001 and have been waging an insurgency ever since against U.S. and other foreign troops and the Western-backed government's fledgling security forces.

Taliban have also repeatedly attacked U.S.-funded road works and have killed or kidnapped several foreign workers over the past year, the latest a Turkish engineer killed on Sunday.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the killing, the second attack in a week on foreigners working on a road project in the west of the country. In a separate incident, suspected Taliban gunman shot dead a man who worked for U.S. forces in Paktika province, an official in the eastern province said.

The wave of violence comes as NATO members are sending thousands more troops to Afghanistan and the alliance prepares to take over responsibility for the dangerous south from U.S. forces.

U.S. assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia Richard Boucher said on a visit to Kabul he expected violence to intensify as NATO forces moved into new areas in the south. The United States is aiming soon to cut its troop strength in Afghanistan from more than 19,000 to about 16,500.

Afghan battle probed for possible "friendly fire" - By Robert Birsel

KABUL (Reuters) - An investigation has been launched into an Afghan battle last week in which an American and Canadian soldier were killed and five men wounded to determine if any were hit by their own side, the U.S. military said on Tuesday.

A joint U.S., Canadian and Afghan team will investigate the March 29 battle in the southern province of Helmand which began when a large group of Taliban insurgents attacked a base manned by foreign and Afghan troops at night.

U.S-led forces used small arms and air strikes to beat back the attackers. As well as the two deaths, a U.S. soldier, three Canadians and an Afghan soldier were wounded.

"The investigation will determine all the facts and circumstances surrounding the incident, including whether any of the casualties may have resulted from friendly fire," the U.S. military said in a statement.

Members of the three-country investigation team would each produce their own report, it said. Canada, the United States and Afghanistan have all lost men in Afghanistan because of misguided fire.

Four Canadian soldiers were killed and eight wounded when a U.S. F-16 fighter mistakenly bombed them while they were on a training exercise near the southern town of Kandahar in 2002.

U.S. army ranger and former professional football star Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan in 2004 during what the U.S. army later acknowledged was wild gunfire by confused U.S. soldiers.

The Canadian commander in Afghanistan, Brigadier General David Frazer, announcing the investigation in the southern city of Kandahar where Canadian forces are based, cited the complexity of the operation in the dark, the terrain, the weather and the threat of attack from all sides.

A Canadian military spokesman declined to speculate on how long the investigation would take. "There's a suspicion friendly fire could have played a role in some of those and that's what the investigation will determine," said the spokesman, Lieutenant Mark MacIntyre, referring to the seven casualties.

He declined to elaborate on the incident except to say air strikes by U.S.-led forces were not believed to have prompted the inquiry. "It is not close air support that is the area being focused upon," MacIntyre said.

The battle on Wednesday last week was the biggest in Afghanistan for months and came on the day the Taliban announced they had launched a spring offensive in their campaign to oust foreign troops.

Twelve Taliban fighters were killed in the attack and 20 in later clashes as they tried to flee, the U.S. military said. The United States has more than 19,000 troops in Afghanistan battling Taliban insurgents in the south and east.
Canada has 2,300 soldiers based in Kandahar, where it commands a multinational task force.

Senior Canadian commander says Afghanistan is not Canada's Iraq

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CP) - The commander of Canada's battle group in southern Afghanistan says the country has not stumbled into another Korean War - or even its own version of Iraq. When asked to define the counter-insurgency struggle that has claimed the lives of 11 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat, Col. Ian Hope said the country is now engaged in a "more lethal" nation-building exercise than the ones carried out in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo during the late 1990s.

"We're seeing pretty much what we expected to see," said the commander of Task Force Orion in a recent sit down interview with The Canadian Press.

"We're not fighting an enemy as much as we're trying to win the confidence of the Afghan people. We didn't come here to find an enemy and go out and destroy an enemy. We came here to help a people."

Unlike Iraq, which is descending into a tempest of sectarian violence, commanders on the ground in Afghanistan, believe that the bloody insurgency here has limited appeal. In fact the Taliban may have sown the seeds of their own demise with their campaign of destroying schools and the January beheading of a teacher who educated women, one senior coalition officer suggested.

"We build schools. We build bridges. They burn them down," said Col. Chris Vernon, the British chief of staff to the Canadian multi-national brigade commander.

"I don't know anywhere in the world where a culture of negativity about allowing your people to be educated sustains any degree of local support. It's something I personally find pretty abhorent and bizzare."

It's almost cliche to say that many Taliban recruits are uneducated, poverty-stricken young males in their teens and early 20s. Vernon put a decidedly 21st Century twist on the well worn adage of winning hearts and minds. "It really comes to the question, can we offer them better employment than that which the Taliban are offering," he said.

Telling the difference between war and nation-building in this acrid region of grinding poverty is tough at the best of times, but it's been especially difficult over the last week.

Coalition troops have faced a furious stream of rocket attacks, murderous suicide car bombings and roadside explosions that have injured several soldiers, including three Canadians.

The carnage among the Afghan civilian population has been even worse with dozens of people injured and killed, including a four-year-old boy, who was an innocent bystander to a car bombing.

Last Wednesday, in the Sangin district of insurgent-rich Helmand Province, Canadians engaged in a long firefight with the Taliban, who tried to overrun a remote outpost. Pte. Robert Costall, 22, a Canadian machine gunner and U.S. National Guardsman 1st Class John Thomas Stone, 52, were killed in the vicious fight.

Coalition officers are sensitive to the mood and perceptions back home, not only in Canada, but other countries where war-like postures are treated with derision. The Netherlands, which recently gave parliamentary approval for the deployment of its troops, is one example.

Many commanders among the multi-national brigade have worried - sometimes openly - that nightly television images of mayhem and newspaper accounts of carnage have left a distorted view of what's happening on the ground.

Hope conceded he was concerned the Canadian public misunderstood the role, but those fears have partly eased with the barrage media coverage in Canada, which has shown some of the humanitarian aspects of the mission.

"Canadians are starting to see the complexities of this mission and the fact that it can't be characterized in one word," he said.

"We've had a deliberate policy that's been going on for at least two years. What is going on here with our soldiers is just part of that strategy. The application of military forces with CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency), with the RCMP to create institutions that this country needs to have an enduring peace."

Hope was cautious when asked to characterize for the public what victory in Afghanistan would look like.

It cannot be defined in conventional terms, or the way our generation understood the Allies' much celebrated victory in the Second World War, he said. "There cannot be pure military victory in this struggle," Hope said.

"It will allude anyone who chases it. Victory here has to be in terms of governance. It has to be legitimate and effective. There must be reconstruction and an economic base."

Education and skills training is proving to be one of the key weapons in the coalition arsenal. An American provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in nearby Zabul Province is offering carpentry and information technology training to young people willing to learn.

"If we can create a skill base among these young Afghan people, they can get a job and the economy can begin to move," he recently told local media in Kandahar. "I would put it you that (a job) is a better option than losing your life attacking a Western military base."

Afghanistan debate needed, Layton says - TERRY WEBER, Globe and Mail

NDP Leader Jack Layton said Tuesday that his party wants an emergency debate on Canada's role in Afghanistan to help clarify the mission for Canadians. Mr. Layton told CBC Newsworld that the NDP now has a request before the Speaker of the House asking for an emergency debate on the issue.

“Canadians support our soldiers over there, and their bravery, and their commitment to this country, but they also want to know that their elected representatives have thought it through,” Mr. Layton said.

Such a debate, he said, would give Canadians more information on issues such as the cost and nature of the mission and how long Canadians can expect to remain in the war-torn country. “These are important matters, and really should be top of mind and the first items debated in the House,” he said.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said earlier this month that Canada will not “cut and run” from Afghanistan and insisted that there is no need for a Commons debate, arguing that one could potentially hurt the morale of troops overseas.

Mr. Layton's comments came as federal politicians returned to Parliament Hill this week for the first time since Parliament was dissolved in November. Governor-General Michaëlle Jean is to deliver the Conservative government's Throne Speech Tuesday' afternoon, laying out the groundwork for the Tories plans for the coming months.

They also followed news earlier Wednesday that the deadly firefight in Afghanistan that left Canadian Private Robert Costall and a U.S. medic dead may have been “friendly fire.” Five others were wounded in the incident.

In a statement issued by National Defence, Brigadier-General David Fraser, who assumed command of multinational forces in Southern Afghanistan last month, said initial findings of a preliminary joint Canada-U.S. probe of last week's incident suggest that further investigation is necessary.

“The initial findings justify the requirement for further investigation to determine the facts and circumstances surrounding the firefight, including whether any of the casualties may have resulted from friendly fire,” Gen. Fraser said.

A Canadian Forces National Investigation Service investigation is now under way. The U.S. military is also investigating, he said. “Coalition military operations in Afghanistan are complex,” Gen. Fraser said.

“Terrain, weather and threat levels combine to create an extremely challenging operating environment.” He also said the fact that the incident happened at night, with attacks from multiple directions, “just adds to the complexity.”

Gen. Fraser also said it would be “inappropriate” to speculate on the events of that night and said further information will be made available once the probe is complete.

There are about 2,200 Canadian troops currently serving in southern Afghanistan. A dozen Canadians have died in Afghanistan since Canada first launched anti-terrorist and reconstruction operations there in 2002. With a report from Canadian Press

Pakistani Taliban gaining strength - Strong-arm tactics deal blow to U.S. war on Islamic militancy - via San Francisco Gate Declan Walsh, Chronicle Foreign Service Monday, April 3, 2006

Peshawar, Pakistan -- A pickup packed with fundamentalist fighters rolls through Wana, a troubled town in Pakistan's northern tribal belt. Some fearful residents call the vehicle "Azrael" -- the Angel of Death.

"It moves freely through the bazaar; nobody dares stop it. They use it to kill people accused of being American spies or anti-Islamic elements," said Lateef Afridi, a tribal lawyer and opposition politician in Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier province.

The dramatic rise of the self-described Pakistani Taliban in recent months has triggered alarm among Pakistan's leaders and marked a significant setback in the American-driven war on Islamic militancy. The militants are strongest in North and South Waziristan, two of seven tribal districts along the Afghan border.

Strict social edicts have been handed down, residents said during interviews in Peshawar, where many from the tribal lands have fled. Foreign journalists are not permitted to travel to the tribal areas without official permission, which is rarely granted.

In towns across Waziristan, shopkeepers may not sell music or films; barbers are instructed not to shave beards, the refugees said. Checkpoints have been set up to collect taxes from passing vehicles, and a self-described Taliban group has established a new Islamic court in Wana to replace the traditional jirga, or council of elders.

The Pakistani Taliban use violence to challenge the authority of the Islamabad government. In recent weeks, bombs toppled a radio transmitter in Wana, silencing the state radio station, and blew up a telephone exchange in the remote Shikai Valley.

More than 100 pro-government elders and politicians have been killed in the past nine months, said a Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity. The latest victim, a former militant who signed a peace agreement with the Pakistan government last year, was shot March 22.

The militants have dispensed rough justice in the name of Islam. In December, at least seven alleged bandits in Miran Shah were killed and their mutilated corpses hung from an electricity pole in the town center. A DVD of the gruesome spectacle that was released later showed turbaned militants stuffing money into the dead men's mouths. Late last month, a 25-year-old man was executed on orders of a Taliban court that found him guilty of car theft.

And Sunday, the bullet-riddled body of cleric Maulana Zahir Shah was found in Sararogha, a mountainous region close to the border with Afghanistan, according to the Associated Press. Shah was killed on suspicion that he was a spy for the United States and Britain, a local government official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The chaos is spreading to nearby areas administered by the provincial government. On March 20, a remote-controlled bomb -- similar to those used against U.S. forces in Afghanistan -- ripped through a police vehicle in Dera Ismail Khan, just outside South Waziristan, killing seven people.

Efforts by the Pakistani military, which has deployed 70,000 soldiers and paramilitaries to Waziristan, are faltering. An army strike against an alleged al Qaeda training camp March 1, three days before President Bush visited Islamabad, sparked a bloody battle for control of Miran Shah between the army and the rebels that left more than 100 people dead.

Fareed Ullah Khan, a town resident, said he cowered inside his home for three days as shells whistled overhead and the air rattled with gunfire. As the fighting intensified, his family desperately scurried from room to room in search of safety.

"We were afraid the bullets might land where we were hiding," said Khan, who has since fled to Peshawar. "It was terrifying."

President Pervez Musharraf has pledged to quell the revolt. Since a curfew was declared in Miran Shah, his troops have regained control. But diplomats and local officials say they are worried.

"The so-called war on terror is going badly," said a Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Many draw worried comparisons with the emergence of the Afghan Taliban in the early 1990s. The two groups are strongly linked -- several leading Pakistani militants are believed to fight alongside Afghanistan's Taliban, who also are ethnic Pashtuns.

But there are differences. Diplomats and local journalists describe the Pakistani Taliban as a loose alliance of tribal militias operating under radical religious clerics such as Sadiq Noor and Abdul Khaliq, who have been blamed for the recent fighting in North Waziristan. Many of the insurgents are angered by a series of heavy-handed military strikes on the tribal lands over the past two years.

In response to pressure on Musharraf from the Bush administration, the Pakistani army has attacked several al Qaeda hideouts since 2004, often using artillery and helicopter gunships. The army claims to have killed about 400 militants, but hundreds of civilians are also thought to have died.

The al Qaeda fugitives in Waziristan are mostly Uzbek and Chechen fighters who slipped across the border from Afghanistan in late 2001, according to intelligence sources speaking on condition of anonymity. The foreigners have blended into the local tribal structures, buying loyalties with money and marrying local women, these sources said.

But as with much in Waziristan, details are hard to confirm. Several Pakistani journalists have been killed in Waziristan, and many of the rest fled the region. Hayatullah Khan, a 32-year-old reporter for an Urdu-language newspaper based in Mir Ali, was abducted in December and is still missing.

"It is impossible to work in Waziristan any more," said Sailab Mahsud, head of the Tribal Union of Journalists. "We are trapped between the army, the Taliban and the Maliks (local political leaders)."

The United States, impatient to catch more senior al Qaeda figures, is increasingly stepping into the fray. Unmanned Predator drones that sweep over the tribal areas on surveillance missions -- often enough that villagers can recognize their engine noise -- are now equipped with Hellfire missiles.

In January, one such U.S. missile destroyed a house in Bajaur District in which the Americans suspected al Qaeda's number two leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was hiding, killing 13 villagers. The U.S. military has carried out several other attacks in the tribal areas, said the Western diplomat, but allowed Pakistan to claim responsibility. The U.S. Embassy declined to comment on the matter.

The offensives have infuriated the tribesmen, who have a history of resisting foreign occupation that dates back to the British Raj. "These are not the proper Taliban," said refugee Fareed Ullah Khan, referring to the militants. "They are the common people who have revolted against the (Pakistani) government and targeted killings by Americans."

The tribesmen are also deeply disillusioned with their own government. The tribal areas are governed under the Frontier Crime Regulations, a draconian legal framework that dates back to British colonialism in the 19th century. The tribesmen have little political representation and some of the country's highest illiteracy rates.

The strong Taliban presence in the tribal areas has sparked a war of words with neighboring Afghanistan. Afghan President Hamid Karzai gave Pakistan a list in February of 150 Afghan Taliban suspects he says are sheltered in Pakistan, but Musharraf dismissed it in a CNN interview March 5.

All seminaries at Afghan refugees camps in Pak province shut down - Source: Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) Date: 03 Apr 2006

Islamabad, April 3, IRNA - All seminaries at Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province have been closed down. Talking to "IRNA", a Pakistani official said that the measure had been taken in line with the directive from the central government.

Tariq pointed out that the seminaries had been shut in 10 refugee camps in Peshawar and 17 others in the adjoining areas of the provincial capital of NWFP.

At these institutions, he explained, as many as 400 teachers used to impart education to 89,6305 refugees. Meanwhile, Education Minister Javed Ashraf Qazi told newsmen on Saturday last that more than 3 million refugees were still living in Pakistan, who have to go back to their country.

"These refugees are a burden on Pakistan and therefore, they should be going back to Afghanistan. Majority of them is involved in unlawful activities," he maintained.

The government of Pakistan rejected a demand by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees that they should be allowed to continue living here till the end of the current Iranian year.

According to UNHCR statistics on March 11, 2005, out of 3 million plus Afghans, 878,000 were living in Waziristan tribal areas of Pakistan and around 60,000 of them had bought houses and had no intention to return to their country, reports said.

Pakistan and Iran were the two countries that had to accommodate huge number of refugees from Afghanistan, following the invasion by former USSR and later due to civil war there.

Mines still kill or maim 100 people a month in Afghanistan -(AFP)3 April 2006

DEH ZABZ, Afghanistan -Millions of mines and unexploded pieces of ordnance still kill or maim around 100 people a month in war-ravaged Afghanistan, a demining group said on Monday.

Afghanistan remains one of the world’s most mined countries despite the internationally backed efforts involving 10,000 people employed to destroy the devices, a representative of the Halo Trust told reporters.

Millions of landmines were laid by the Russian military during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation and during the subsequent civil wars between resistance commanders.

The devices still threaten the lives of more than 4.2 million Afghans, or about a quarter of the population, said Farid Homayoun, country director of the British-founded Halo Trust.

"There are at least 100 mine accidents per month, which is an unacceptably high figure," Homayoun said at a ceremony to mark the United Nations Mine Action Awareness Day to be observed on Tuesday.

Since the 2001 toppling of the Taleban in a US-led invasion, the number of mine accidents had dropped by 50 percent due to extensive demining, he said, predicting the country would be free of mines by 2013.

Homayoun said most of the mines were laid along highways, around former military bases and other government installations, as well as in villages and on farmland.

Hundreds of anti-tank and anti-personnel mines collected from various stockpiles were destroyed during Monday’s ceremony at a village outside the capital Kabul.

Landmines were not just a problem for war-weary Afghanistan, UN Secretary General Kofi Anan said in a statement. "It’s a worldwide problem. Every hour people are maimed or killed by landmines," he said.

Afghanistan, which has endured decades of ruinous conflict, has signed the Ottawa Convention banning the use, trade and production of landmines. Based on the document, it must destroy its mine stockpiles before March 2007.

Serious action would be needed to meet this deadline because Afghanistan had so many stockpiles, said Shohab Hakimi, head of the country’s anti-mine campaign.

Despite the toppling of the Islamist Taleban government more than four years ago, Afghanistan is still plagued by violence with a Taleban-led insurgency killing scores of people every month. Ten deminers have been killed or wounded by improvised explosives laid by the Taleban in their attacks on US and Afghan targets, Homayoun said.

Afghanistan to be cleared of mine within 7 years - People's Daily Online, China

The post-war and most mine contaminated Afghanistan would be cleared of millions of mines within the next seven years with the support of international community, the country's director of British-based de-mining agency HALO Trust said Monday.

"So far more than 1 billion square meters have been cleared of mines in Afghanistan which we still have about 716 million square meters to clear in the coming years and I hope before 2013," Farid Hamayoun told journalists here.

He also added that mine explosions over the past two decades had affected 4.2 million Afghans or about 25 percent of the war- shattered country's population. "There are 4.2 million Afghans directly or indirectly have affected by mines," he stressed.

His comment coincided with the message of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on the eve of International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action in which the UN body chief called on governments to ratify the anti-personnel mine ban treaty.

Hamayoun also called on Afghan government as a signatory to Ottawa Convention to destroy all mines and stockpiles by 2007. Afghanistan joined the Convention on March 1, 2003, which will assist the government in meeting its stockpile destruction obligations.

Several UN-funded de-mining organizations have been engaged in Afghanistan since 1988 to sweep and defuse millions of mines planted by invading former Soviet Union's army, Afghan resistance groups, rival factions and Taliban militias over the past two decades.

Though there is no official figure about the mines' victims in Afghanistan, the authorities believe that 1.5 million people had either been killed or maimed in mine explosions over the past 25 years of war and civil strife. Source: Xinhua

Australia, Netherlands to share embassy in Kabul - Associated Press

Canberra — The Netherlands and Australia will share an embassy in Kabul as part of a closer relationship in violence-ravaged Afghanistan, Prime Minister John Howard said Tuesday.

Mr. Howard made the announcement after meeting with Jan Peter Balkenende, who this week became the first Dutch prime minister to visit Australia since 1997.

The visit comes ahead of Australia sending another 200 soldiers in July to Afghanistan where they will come under the command of a Dutch-led provincial reconstruction team in the southern Taliban stronghold of Uruzgan.

In announcing the shared embassy, Mr. Howard said: “It's another demonstration of how close and effectively we can work together.” The new embassy is expected to open before the end of the year, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said.

Mr. Balkenende said it was important for international solidarity that his country was involved in Afghanistan where there are 2,000 Dutch troops.

“Australia and the Netherlands share the same values -- freedom, liberty and human rights -- and therefore it is important that we work on counterterrorism ... that we work close together now in Uruzgan,” he told reporters.

In February, the Dutch government approved sending 1,200 troops to Uruzgan province, where a NATO-led force is setting up operations to rebuild the area. The Dutch parliament, under pressure from the United States and NATO, approved the mission last month after six months of bitter political wrangling.

Australia currently has 300 troops in Afghanistan including 190 Australian special forces soldiers fighting insurgents. Mr. Balkenende recalled that Australia and the Netherlands had been allies during the Second World War.

Before meeting with Mr. Howard and senior ministers, the Dutch leader visited the Australian War Memorial, where he laid a wreath at the tomb of the Australian unknown soldier.

On Thursday, he and Mr. Howard will travel to the west coast city of Fremantle from where a replica of the Dutch ship Duyfken is to set sail to circumnavigate Australia.

The original Duyfken made the first European contact with Australia 400 years ago and Mr. Balkenende's visit is marking that anniversary.

The Netherlands, the fourth largest investor in the Australian economy after Britain, the United States and Japan, has also sent a business delegation to Australia to coincide with the Prime Minister's visit.

AIB launches Internet banking facility – Pajhwok 04/03/2006 By Danish Karokhel

KABUL - The Afghanistan International Bank (AIB) Monday launched the first-ever Internet banking facility in the country's banking sector.

The newly-launched facility will present online account information, online money transfers and online service for the 1,100 customers across the country. The facilities will not only save the customer's time but provide round-the-clock service.

In this connection, a ceremony was held here which was attended by senior officials of the bank, businessmen, local traders and customers of the bank.

Addressing the function, AIB chief executive officer John W. Haye briefed the participants about the newly-introduced facility, the bank's role and its increasing influence in the banking sector of the country.

Haye said the bank had branches in three cities, including Kandahar, Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif. He hoped an additional three to six branches would be opened this year. To facilitate the customers, he said the bank was studying the Islamic banking system and plan was under consideration to start profit and loss account system.

Highlighting importance of the Internet banking in the modern era, he said the new system would save time and energy of customers as well as ensure safety of transfer of amounts and overcome additional expenditures.

He said the bank had installed five ATM machines in Kabul to facilitate the clients. Earlier, only traders and members of business class were account-holders but now the middle class can also open account in AIB. Haye said the bank had 65 employees with 11 females and 12 foreign staffers from four countries.

[Disclaimer: The content of this news bulletin does not necessarily reflect the view or policy of the Afghan Government, unless specifically stated as such. The collection of articles and commentaries from Afghan and international news sources is provided for informational purposes, and accuracy of the news is the responsibility of the original source.]