“]

The suspect in the Times Square bomb attempt claims to have visited fighters' camps in Waziristan [AFP

The raid targeted North Waziristan, a tribal region near the Afghan border where many Taliban-affiliated networks are based.

Pakistani intelligence officials said two missiles hit the house of Awal Gul, a local tribesman, in Inzarkas, a village 50km west of Miran Shah.

Residents spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.

The suspect in the recent failed car bombing in New York City’s Times Square has claimed he visited in a Taliban fighters camp in the Waziristan region.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said Washington expects more co-operation from Pakistan in fighting terrorism and warned of “severe consequences” if an attack on US soil were traced back to the South Asian country.

She made the remarks in an interview with CBS television’s “60 Minutes” that were to be broadcast later on Sunday.

The US has stepped up its drone attacks on suspected Pakistan Taliban sites after a Jordanian suicide bomber killed seven CIA employees at a US base across the border in the eastern Afghan province of Khost last December.

Pakistan publicly rejects CIA’s drone attacks, saying they are a violation of its sovereignty and fuel anti-US feelings, which complicates its efforts against Taliban fighters.

In another development, Pakistani army helicopters attacked suspected fighters’ hideouts on Sunday morning in the Shana Garhi area of the Orakzai tribal region, killing at least eight of them, Jahanzeb Khan, a local official, said.

Pakistan security forces are carrying out an operation against fighters who escaped the military offensive in South Waziristan. Some have taken refuge in Orakzai, which lies next to North Waziristan, and other neighbouring tribal areas.

At least nine people, mostly Iraqi soldiers and police, have been killed and another 24 wounded after a series of attacks on security checkpoints across the capital Baghdad.

In the apparently co-ordinated attacks, reports said armed men used silenced weapons to fire on six checkpoints early on Monday, while bombs were planted at three others.

A roadside bomb, set off as a police patrol passed by, also killed two civilians.

The attacks - all executed around dawn - showed a new tactic being used by fighters in the country, the Reuters news agency cited an interior ministry spokesman as saying.

“This was a message to us that they can attack us in different parts of the city at the same time because they have cells everywhere,” he said.

At least eight police officers were also wounded in the western city of Falluja on Monday after bombs were planted outside their homes.

Rising violence

The attacks come just two days after reports that the Iraqi defence ministry was considering building a “security fence”around the capital as a way of curbing violence and controlling the movements of anti-government fighters.

Access to the city would be controlled by eight checkpoints, and construction could be completed by mid-2011, reports from local broadcaster Al Iraqiyya Television said.

Violence across Iraq has dropped significantly since 2006 and 2007, when the country’s sectarian conflict was at its height. But attacks have been on the rise in recent months, particular in Baghdad.

National parliamentary elections on March 7left no clear winner, and continuing wrangling by political blocs to form a governable coalition have left an atmosphere of instability in the county.

‘Backlash’

Security forces have in recent weeks also made a series of arrests of high-profile members of the al-Qaeda in Iraq group, Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from Baghdad, said.

“Certainly, authorities were predicting a backlash against that, we had seen a number of attacks recently, but this is the most serious in terms, not only of the death toll, but of the sense of co-ordination,” he said.

“It would be a very strong answer, if indeed it is an al-Qaeda group [behind Monday's strikes], that despite the fact that their leadership is gone, they are still capable of carrying out this type of attack.”

Police said three of checkpoints fired at on Monday were in the west of Baghdad, with two more in the east and one in the south. The checkpoints that were bombed were in the south and southeast of the capital.

Full Article

Taliban commander speaks out

Al Jazeera has obtained an exclusive interview with Sirajuddin Haqqani, a Taliban commander fighting US and Nato forces in Afghanistan.

US commanders have identified the Pakistan-based Haqqani network - widely  believed to have ties with Pakistan’s spy agency – as one of the biggest threats to US forces in Afghanistan.

The network, which was initially nurtured by the CIA, carries out attacks on foreign forces across the majority of eastern Afghanistan.

The US has put a $5 million bounty on Sirajuddin Haqqani’s head. David Chater has the latest from Kabul.

Peter Goldsmith, the government’s senior legal adviser at the time, wrote in 2002 that he was “not aware of existence of material” that would indicate an “imminent threat from Iraq”.

“I think you should know that I see considerable difficulties in being satisfied that military action would be justified on the basis of self-defence,” Goldsmith wrote to Geoff Hoon, Britain’s defence minister from 1999 to 2005.

“In particular I am not aware of the existence of material indicating the existence of an imminent threat from Iraq of the sort which would justify military action without support of a [UN] Security Council Chapter VII authorisation.”

Goldsmith later told the cabinet in March 2003 that the war was legal without a UN resolution, and the US-led invasion went ahead three days later.

The letters were released as Hoon gave evidence to a British public inquiry into the Iraq war.

He is the most senior politician to appear before the hearings so far.

‘Legal justification’

Hoon told the hearing in London on Tuesday that Goldsmith had “categorically” concluded that “there was a legal justification for military action” in his final conclusion in 2003.

He also said the government wanted a diplomatic solution to the crisis and did not think Tony Blair, the UK prime minister at the time, gave a promise to George Bush, the US president, to support war come what may.

“I think that right up until the vote in the House of Commons, our attitude towards
the use of force was always conditional,” Hoon said.

He identified mid-2002 as the period when it become clear that Washington “meant business” over Iraq, because the country was so deeply traumatised over the September 11, 2001 attacks and it perceived Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader at the time, as another threat.

“It was getting pretty real by then. I think there was a real sense of the Americans thinking through in a very practical way the consequences of the ‘axis of evil’ speech [by Bush] and focusing on Iraq.

“So we had no doubt at that stage in the summer that they meant business.”

Bush first branded Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an “axis of evil” in his State of the Union Address on January 29, 2002.

Wide-ranging inquiry

The Iraq war inquiry is Britain’s third and widest-ranging inquiry into the conflict, which triggered huge anti-war huge protests in the UK at the time and in which 179 British soldiers died fighting.

Nazanine Moshiri, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in London, said the inquiry will be looking to Blair, who is due to testify on January 29, for key evidence at the hearing.

“The Iraq inquiry says it is ’struggling to find’ key intelligence evidence supporting Tony Blair’s case for war,” she said.

“It will be asking him to fill in those gaps when he appears here next week.”

Two previous reports on aspects of the war have cleared Blair’s government of wrongdoing over the conflict.

The Yemeni military is fighting al-Qaeda, Houthi rebels, and a separatist movement

A group of Muslim leaders have said Yemenis have a religious duty to resist foreign military intervention in the country.

“In the event of any foreign party insisting on hostilities against, an assault on, or military or security intervention in Yemen, then Islam requires all its followers to pursue jihad,” a statement signed by 150 clerics on Thursday said.

Foreign governments have voiced increasing concern about the situation in Yemen since an attempted attack on a US-bound airliner, after which al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed it had armed the alleged bomber.

On Wednesday, Carl Levin, the chairman of the US senate armed services committee, said that Washington should use drone attacks, air raids or covert operations against al-Qaeda fighters in the country.

“Most options ought to be on the table,” short of invasion by US forces, the Democrat senator said.

The US and Britain have announced plans to fund Yemen’s counter-terrorism police force, but Barack Obama, the US president, has explicitly ruled out sending in troops.

Verdict ‘resonates’

Mohamed Vall, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, said that the religious leaders’ decision to oppose any miltary intervention would carry great weight in the country.

“In a highly conservative, highly religious society like Yemen, it is the word of the clerics and not that of the politicians that really resonates among the masses. And today the clerics of Yemen have announced their verdict,” Vall said.

The clerics said that their opinion was in line with that of most Yemenis and the Sana’a government, while also criticising the killing of foreigners in an apparent allusion to suspected al-Qaeda attacks.

The Yemeni government, which is also fighting a rebel group in the north of the country, and a secessionist movement in the south, has said it is engaged in an “open war” to clear al-Qaeda fighters from its territory.

“The war security forces launched against al-Qaeda elements is open whenever or wherever we find these elements,” a government news website reported on Thursday, quoting an unnamed security source.

It said the source had also warned Yemenis against “hiding any al-Qaeda elements”.

Sana’a has repeatedly denied that it will require foreign intervention to help it defeat the movement, an amalgamation of groups from Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

“Yemen is not Afghanistan, nor Pakistan, where terrorists constantly launch attacks while the authorities try to respond,” Ali Anisi, Yemen’s head of national security, said on Wednesday.

“Here, we anticipate the threat. Yemen is not a hideout for the terrorists and will never be.”

‘Repressive government’

Robert Grenier, the former CIA station chief in Islamabad and chief of the Iraq Issues Group, told Al Jazeera: “One of the difficulties that [the Americans] see in Yemen is, as we see in many places, is unrepresentative, corrupt and repressive government.

“At the end of the day, the only real solution to the problem of terrorism is to have responsible government, with the willingness and the ability to control its own territory.

“There are many who are inclined to view the Ali Abdullah Salehs [president of Yemen] of the world as American puppets. Well, in fact, maybe unfortunately, it is far from that. … [However], there aren’t really many good alternatives.”

Yemen has insisted that it is making advances against al-Qaeda, citing air raids in December that killed more than 60 people and a string of reported arrests of suspected al-Qaeda figures.

However, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has used the air raids to encourage anti-American feeling, claiming that they were carried out by US warplanes.

Pakistani officials say Hakimullah Mehsud, Pakistan's Taliban chief, was targeted in the attack

A suspected US drone attack has killed at least 18 people and injured 14 others in Pakistan’s northwest tribal belt, near the Afghan border, security officials say.

The attack took place in Pasalkot village in North Waziristan, a stronghold of Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked fighters.

Two missiles were fired at a compound on Thursday, where Hakimullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban chief, was believed to have been.

“We had information that he was around there. We’re checking on whether he was killed,” a Pakistani security official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters news agency.

However, a Taliban spokesman told Pakistan’s Dawn TV that Mehsud was safe and had left minutes before the assault.

Increased attacks

Alan Fisher, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Pakistan, said the US were likely to view the operations as a “huge success”.

“The use of drone strikes in Pakistan is highly controversial but there’s no sign of the Americans stopping them any time soon,” he said.

“They will regard this latest operation as a huge success – targeting and killing what they say were a number of militants.”

Mehsud took over as leader of the Pakistani Taliban five months ago, after Baitullah Mehsud, his predecessor, was killed in a similar US drone attack.

The US has increased drone attacks in Waziristan since a suicide bomber crossed over Pakistan’s border and killed seven CIA employees in an attack in eastern Afghanistan on December 30.

A video was later released showing Hakimullah Mehsud sitting beside the CIA bomber, a Jordanian double agent, creating the impression that his group played a major role in the second biggest attack on the CIA in its history.

The attack was the seventh suspected US missile assault in the tribal district this month.

North Waziristan houses Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters as well as members of the Haqqani network, a powerful group known for staging attacks on foreign troops in Afghanistan.

The US government has called on Islamabad to step up its efforts against Taliban- and al-Qaeda-linked fighters who cross over into Afghanistan.

The Pakistani army recently completed an offensive against the Taliban in South Waziristan, which borders North Waziristan.

The building in the city of Karachi collapsed after the explosion on Friday

At least seven people have been killed after an explosion destroyed a house in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi.

Police said that the blast on Friday appeared to have been caused by explosives stored in the building.

Television footage showed police removing guns, suicide vests and grenades from the site, in the city’s Baldia Town neighbourhood.

“It seems that explosives which were stored in the house caused the explosion,” Waseem Ahmad, the Karachi police chief, said.

“It seems that the house was being used by terrorists. We are taking utmost care in removing the rubble. Bomb-disposal officials have arrived at the scene to determine the exact nature of the explosion.”

Two people were arrested at the scene of the blast, police said.

“Police believe that this was terrorist cell hiding out in Karachi,” Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from Islamabad, said.

‘Suspects from Swat’

Rehman Malik, Pakistan’s interior minister, said the people living in the house were from Swat, a district in the North West Frontier Province where the Pakistani military last year launched an operation against Taliban fighters.

“According to reports they were all asleep in the courtyard when this blast occurred,” he said.

The same account was given by a suspect, who was injured in the blast and later captured by police, the Express News television channel reported.

Express News cited unnamed officials as saying that the suspect – identified by a single name, Imran – told investigators that three suicide bombers had put on explosive vests and one went off accidentally as its wearer was dozing.

Karachi has largely avoided the suspected Taliban attacks experienced in the rest of the country, but there have been outbreaks of sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims.

A bomb attack on December 28 hit a procession of Shia Muslims marking the Ashoura ceremony leaving more than 40 people dead.

Al Jazeera’s Fisher said: “There has always been a concern about Karachi because it has been seen by many as the gateway that people use to get in and out of the country.

“Finance has been raised for some of the groups behind the bombings in Pakistan in Karachi, there is a support network there.

“There is a concern, given the attack on the parade in the city, this may be the start of more attacks in Karachi.”

Attacks across Pakistan have intensified in recent months in an apparent response to a military offensive against the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan.

Blackwater was criticised for its actions while working for the US defence department in Iraq

Two former employees of the US private security contractor Blackwater, now known as Xe, have been arrested over the killings of two Afghans last year.

Justin Cannon and Chris Drotleff were charged on Thursday with second-degree murder, attempted murder and weapons charges.

The two Afghans were killed, and a third was wounded, in a shooting incident that apparently took place after a traffic accident Kabul on May 5.

The two men have told the Associated Press news agency that they were justified in opening fire on a car that caused an accident in front of their vehicle, then turned and sped towards them.

“I feel comfortable firing my weapon any time I feel my life is in danger,” Drotleff said. “That night, my life was 100 per cent in danger.”

The indictment, unsealed in a federal court in the US state of Virginia on Thursday, provided no details about the incident other than it occurred at an intersection of two roads in the Afghan capital.

Xe ‘co-operation’

Drotleff and Cannon were employed by Paravant LLC, a unit of Xe which was previously known as Blackwater Worldwide, and were providing weapons training to the Afghan National Army.

“Xe Services immediately and fully co-operated with the government’s investigation of this tragic incident and terminated the individuals involved for violating company policy,” the company said in a statement.

“In respect for the judicial process, the company will not provide further comment.”

The latest charges against former employees of the private security contractor came as Xe settled seven cases concerning alleged illegal activities that led to the deaths of an number of Iraqis.

The company said in a statement that they were “pleased” with the settlement, which came after months of negotiations.

Dozens of Iraqis had accused the company of behaviour that led to a culture of recklessness and illegality, including the deaths of several people, and sought compensation through the courts.

Last week, a court dismissed manslaughter charges against five Blackwater security guards who were accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in 2007.

Zeid, a Jordanian intelligence officer killed in the attack, was honoured in Amman

A suicide bomber who killed eight people when he attacked a US base in Afghanistan has been identified as a “double agent” working for Jordanian intelligence, according to US media and intelligence reports.

Al Jazeera sources in Afghanistan on Tuesday said that the man, identified as Hammam Khalil al-Balawi, had been brought to the base in the eastern Afghan province of Khost, by car, from across the border in Pakistan.

Al-Balawi, also known as Abu Dujana al-Khorasani, is believed to have offered the CIA new information on the whereabouts of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda second in command.

He had apparently duped his employers into believing that statements he had made in the past on websites about wanting to die as a martyr were part of his cover.

The bombing, which occurred last Wednesday, killed seven CIA employees and a Jordanian intelligence officer, identified by Jordan’s state news agency Petra as Captain Sharif Ali bin Zeid.

Al-Qaeda connection

Former CIA officers said Zeid, who was related to the Jordanian royal family, was al-Balawi’s reporting officer.

Al-Balawi, who had in the past been imprisoned in Jordan, is thought to have been recruited by Jordanian intelligence to help track down al-Zawahiri because of his connections with al-Qaeda.

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and White House adviser, said that according to unconfirmed intelligence reports, al-Zawahiri himself had ordered al-Balawi to carry out the attack using the pretext of information about his whereabouts.

“The bomber allegedly was sent by Ayman Zawahiri himself to conduct the attack and claimed he had information on Zawahiri,” Riedel was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying.

The Jordanian government has not responded to requests for comment on the story.

‘Double agent’

Nisreen el-Shamayleh, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Amman, the Jordanian capital, said: “In the past al-Balawi had been imprisoned and tortured in Jordanian prisons for participating in al-Qaeda meetings. That was way back in the past.

“After being released from prison, he was summoned several times by Jordanian intelligence and it is believed that during that period, and because of al-Balawi’s valuable knowledge of al-Qaeda, he may have then been recruited by Jordanian intelligence,” she said.

“We do know that he wasn’t actually recruited by the Jordanian intelligence for very long.”

Al-Balawi, who was from the Jordanian town of Zarqa, is also known to have trained and worked as a doctor in a hospital in Amman.

The US monitoring service Site Intelligence said that so-called jihadist websites had reported al-Balawi’s arrest in December 2007 without specifying where he had been arrested.

‘Love of jihad’

Site also reported that al-Balwai was a prolific contributor to such websites, even after his release from custody when he was supposed to be working as a Jordanian agent, the monitoring group added.

In a September 2009 posting on a site run by al-Qaeda, he wrote: “If [a Muslim] dies in the cause of Allah, he will grant his words glory that will be permanent marks on the path to guide to jihad, with permission from Allah,” according to Site.

“If love of jihad enters a man’s heart, it will not leave him even if he wants to do so. Indeed, what he sees of luxurious palaces will remind him of positions of the martyrs in the higher heaven.”

El-Shamayleh said the attack would likely damage relations between the CIA and Jordanian intelligence.

“For many years Jordanian intelligence has been one of the CIA’s closest and most useful allies in the Middle East. The attack could be embarrassing for the [Jordanian] government,” she said.

“Jordan has always tried to present itself as an ally and a partner with the US in its ‘fight against terror’.”

In 2006, Jordanian intelligence helped track down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was killed in an air raid in Iraq in June that year.

Taliban claim

The new details of attack on Forward Operating Base Chapman run contrary to earlier claims that the Taliban were behind the attack.

Soon after the blast Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said in an email: “This deadly attack was carried out by a valorous Afghan army member when the officials [Americans] were busy gaining information about the mujahideen.”

The Afghan government later rejected the claim that the bomber had been from the Afghan army.

The attack in Khost was the worst single loss of life for the CIA since the bombing of the US embassy in Beirut in 1983.

Following the attack, the base was locked down. An Al Jazeera source said that about 150 mostly Afghan labourers at the base were detained for three days.

The CIA has not released the names of those killed or provided details about the work its agents had been carrying out, citing “the sensitivity of their mission and other ongoing operations”.

Yemeni authorities have tightened security in Sanaa as foreign embassies have shut

Yemen’s foreign minister has ruled out direct US military intervention to tackle the al-Qaeda group operating in his country.

Abu Baker al-Qirbi made his remarks to Al Jazeera on Monday as the US and British embassies in the capital, Sanaa, remained closed to public following threats by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

“Yemen is going to deal with terrorism in its own way, out of its own interests and therefore I don’t think it will counterfire,” al-Qirbi said.

“The negative impact on Yemen is if there is direct intervention of the US and this is not the case.”

Yemen is battling to control an al-Qaeda movement estimated to have hundreds of fighters in the country, as well as so-called Houthi rebel fighters in the north of the country and a secessionist movement in the south.

Raid on al-Qaeda

At least two suspected al-Qaeda members were killed during a raid near Sanaa on Monday.

Officials said up to three other suspects had been wounded during the operation in the Arhab district, around 30km northeast of the capital.

Security officials told The Associated Press news agency the raid was not connected to the threats that prompted the US and UK embassy closures.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said on Monday that a decision on reopening the US embassy would be taken “as conditions permit”.

“We see global implications from the war in Yemen and the ongoing efforts by al Qaeda in Yemen to use it as a base for terrorist attacks far beyond the region,” she said after meeting the visiting prime minister of Qatar.

The French embassy was also shut to the public on  Monday, while the Japanese mission suspended consular activities as Yemeni authorities increased security in the city.

John Brennan, the US president’s assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism, warned on Sunday that “there are indications that al-Qaeda is planning an attack against a target in Sanaa”.

Detroit attack

Over the weekend, Barack Obama, the US president, accused Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsulaof arming and training a Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up a US airliner bound for the city of Detroit on Christmas Day.

The Yemen-based group, which claims to be affiliated with Osama bin Laden’s organisation, had earlier claimed responsibility for the failed attack and called for  strikes on embassies in Yemen.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said that the failed attack was in response to a series of raids in western Yemen, which the groups says were carried out by US warplanes. Washington and Sanna have denied the claims.

The intensification of security efforts in Sanaa comes just days after the British government announced plans to join the United States in funding an “anti-terrorist” force in Yemen.

Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, has said he will hold a meeting in London on January 28 to discuss how to counter radicalisation in Yemen.

Economic aid

Al-Qirbi told Al Jazeera that the country needed development aid to improve social conditions in the country.

“Economic growth is a necessity for Yemen because one of the main challenges facing Yemen is to improve the standards of living, create jobs and fight poverty because these are the elements that contribute to extremism in Yemen,” he said.

“Our first priority is development assistance and then we need also assistance to build and expand our counter-terrorism units, equip them with all the logistic support they need.

“I know the Americans have committed more money for our counter-terrorism units and that is one area we need support in.”

Hillary Mann-Leverett, a former US diplomat who worked at the national security council, told Al Jazeera that Yemen had long been a troubled state plagued by poverty and violence.

“The most important thing here for geopolitics globally and within the region, is that Yemen has been a fractured, desperately poor and deeply fractitious country that all the countries in the region and the superpowers have used as a battleground,” she said.

But Mann-Leverett also said that the Obama administration’s policies towards the region were partially to blame for threats against Washington and its allies.

“We have given the Saudis a green light to militarily intervene in Yemen and to characterise what is happening in Yemen as a Sunni-Shia war [with] the Saudis there to defend the Sunnis against craven Shia,” she said.

“We’re paying the price today of outsourcing our policy to the Saudis.”