US Defense Secretary Robert Gates (L) talks with India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during a recent trip to New Delhi.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has warned that militants might provoke a war between nuclear armed Pakistan and India.

Gates said in New Delhi on Wednesday that India cannot be expected to show restraint, should it be attacked by a militant group with roots in Pakistan.

“I think it’s not unreasonable to assume India’s patience would be limited were there to be further attacks,” Gates said following the talks with senior Indian officials.

Tension between India and Pakistan escalated particularly after the November 2008 Mumbai attacks that left nearly 170 people dead.

India blames Pakistani-based anti-India groups for the attacks.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since the two neighbors secured independence from Britain in 1947.

Gates, who is visiting the Indian capital of New Delhi, also discussed the prospect of stronger military ties between the US and India. He has pledged to help India gain access to high-tech military technology.

Gates also told Indian officials that Washington intends to be involved in the region for a very long time.

Yemen has boosted troop numbers in three provinces to tackle a growing al-Qaeda challenge

Yemeni fighter jets have attacked the home of a suspected leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the military steps up pressure on the group.

A Yemeni tribal source said a number of people had been killed in Wednesday’s air raids in Erq al-Shabwan village in Maarib province, about 130km east of the capital Sanaa.

The source said the wave of raids, which began in the morning, targeted the house of Ayed al-Shabwani, one of six al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leaders who, according to the Yemen government, were killed in an air attack last week.

A military official, who would not be named, said there had been three attacks on the house and one on an orange grove near the village where the authorities think al-Shabwani had built a safe haven for dozens of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula members.

The official said that there had been a large deployment of government forces at the city of Maarib, about five kilometres from Erq al-Shabwan.

Orange grove targeted

During the afternoon, witnesses said, jets twice fired missiles at the orange grove and afterwards continued to fly in the area.

Mohamed Vall, reporting from the southern city of Aden, said quoting the Yemeni army website that one al-Qaeda member was killed in a separate clash with security forces in Lahij, about 50km north of Aden.

“The fighting took place after a government vehicle was hijacked by al-Qaeda and there was an exchange of fire between the two sides in which the member of the group was killed,” he said.

The clashes come just days after Yemen said it had killed six suspected leaders, including al-Shabwani, of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Saada, a province north of Saana.

Describing Wednesday’s air assault in Maarib, our correspondent said: “[The air raids] started around noon. The government said they targeted the home and farm of al-Shabwani.”

“There were four raids in that area. The government said there was an exchange of fire and that al-Qaeda members were armed with anti-aircraft weapons, which they tried to use against the government aircraft. But the government did not talk about any al-Qaeda casualties.”

In this context, our correspondent noted that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had rejected the Yemeni government’s claim about al-Shabwani’s death, and that the government had not commented on al-Qaeda’s denial.

Airline plot connection

Yemen is under US pressure to clamp down on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which claimed responsibility for the December 25 bid to blow up a US flight from Amsterdam as it landed in Detroit.

Wednesday’s air raid comes a day after the United Nations Security Council added Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to its list of outlawed organisations.

Two of the group’s purported leaders, Nasser al-Wahayshi and Qasim al-Raymi, face new restrictions after the move by the Security Council’s sanctions committee.

The sanctions against the two men, who were among 23 fighters who escaped from a jail in Sanaa in 2006, include worldwide freezes on their assets and travel bans.

“Today’s actions strengthen international efforts to degrade the capabilities of AQAP,” Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, said on Tuesday, referring to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was formed in January 2009 after the merger of groups in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

It has since set up bases inside Yemen and has been blamed for the suicide attack on South Korean tourists in March 2009 and an attempt to assassinate the Saudi deputy interior minister across the border.

The UN committee made its decision shortly after the US state department added the Yemen-based group to it list of proscribed organisations.

“We are determined to eliminate AQAP’s ability to execute violent attacks and to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat their networks,” Philip Crowley, a state department spokesman, said.

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.

Clashes erupted after a dispute over the rebuilding of houses damaged by similar fighting in 2008

Clashes between Muslim and Christian gangs have broken out again in the capital of central Nigeria’s Plateau state, Jos, causing dozens of deaths and forcing police to impose a 24-hour curfew.

A police official said on Tuesday that as many as 60 people might have been killed since Sunday when clashes started.

Mohammed Shittu, an employee at Jos central mosque, where he said bodies were being taken, told the AFP news agency around 150 people had been killed in fighting, with around 800 wounded.

“On Sunday evening, we buried 19 corpses and 52 yesterday. As of right now, there are 78 at the mosque yet to be buried,” Shittu said.

The figures could not be independently confirmed.

Residents said sporadic gunfire could be heard in many neighbourhoods and several houses were on fire, but the violence had not spread beyond the city itself.

Security forces are trying to prevent a repetition of clashes in November 2008, in which hundreds of residents were killed in the country’s worst fighting between Muslim and Christian gangs in years.

Curfew imposed

Earlier on Tuesday, Gregory Anyating, the state’s police commissioner, said: “In view of this situation in town, I hereby declare a 24-hour curfew starting from now.”

Goodluck Jonathan, the Nigerian vice-president, who has taken over ceremonial duties from Umaru Yar’Adua, the ailing president, has directed the national security adviser and senior police officials to take the necessary action to restore calm to the city.

Ima Niboro, the vice-president’s spokesman, said: “I assure you that the federal government is on top of the situation in Jos and the situation is under control.”

This week’s violence started after an argument between Muslim and Christian neighbours over the rebuilding of homes destroyed in the 2008 clashes.

Nigeria has roughly equal numbers of Christians and Muslims, although traditional animist beliefs underpin many people’s faiths.

More than 200 ethnic groups generally live peacefully side by side in the West African country, although one million people were killed in a civil war between 1967 and 1970 and there have been outbreaks of religious unrest since then.

At least 40 people were killed last month in clashes between Nigerian security forces and members of an Islamic sect in the northern city of Bauchi.

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.

There is little Israeli popularity among the public in Jordan

A bomb has exploded near a convoy of cars carrying Israeli diplomats in Jordan, without causing injuries.

The incident occurred close to the Allenby Bridge that links Jordan and the Israeli occupied Palestinian West Bank at about 5pm (1500GMT) on Thursday, Israeli army radio said.

Danny Nevo, Israel’s ambassador to Jordan, was not in any of the vehicles that were travelling from Amman, the Jordanian capital, at the time, Israeli officials said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

“While cars, including two Israeli Embassy cars, were travelling near the town of Naur on the road between Amman and the Jordan Valley a bomb exploded without causing casualties or damage. The cars were not damaged by the blast,” Nabil Sharif, the information minister, said.

Jordanian officials said that they were investigating the incident.

Neighbourly relations

Al Jazeera’s Nisreen al-Shamyleh, at the site of the attacks, said: “This took place near the King Hussein Bridge, also called Allenby in Israel, on the Jordanian side.

“Right now security is heavy in this area.

“Security personnel and police are on the road trying to identify the explosive material. There is some damage to the road.”

Al-Shamyleh said it could have implications for relations between the two nations if it was found that the Israeli convoy was the target of the attack.

“What it means is diplomats are being watched. People know their movements and to a certain extent know how to target them. So it has implications for Israeli diplomats’ safety,” she said.

Al-Shamyleh added that it was unknown what kind of explosives or bomb was used as yet.

Palestinian sympathy

Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994 – the second Arab state to do so after Egypt.

However, the treaty is widely rejected by the Jordanian population. Up to 60 per cent of Jordan’s population is of Palestinian origin.

Jacky Rowland, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Jerusalem, said: “Relations have been cool at best, hostile at worst since the peace treaty was signed just over 15 years ago.

“Obviously there is a lot of sympathy and empathy in Jordan with the Palestinian people in the occupied territories.

“I think the point at which relations really started to cool was as people in Jordan really saw that no progress was being made in efforts to have a peace treaty between Israel and Palestinians.

“Then, relations hit an all-time low with the Israeli crackdown on the Palestinian uprising which began in 2000, and since then the Israeli seige on Gaza and the war on Gaza just over year ago.

“In a recent opinion poll in Jordan not a single person interviewed gave Israel a favourable rating or said they were willing to accept Israel or engage with it in any way.”

The Allenby/King Hussein Bridge is 50km west of Amman.

Clashes broke out between the activists and police in El-Arish on Tuesday night

George Galloway, the British MP leading the Viva Palestina international aid convoy to the Gaza Strip, has been declared ‘person non grata’ by the Egyptian government and deported from the country.

The politician was picked up by Egyptian officials at the Rafah border crossing on Friday and driven to Cairo, the capital, where he was placed on a flight back to London.

On arriving at Heathrow airport, in the UK capital, Galloway said: “It’s always been a badge of honour to be deported by a tin-pot dictator and that’s what happened this morning.

“Having crossed the border from Gaza into Egypt … my friend and I were bundled into a car, 25 officers, accepting no dissuasion, drove us straight to the airport, basically forced us onto the plane.”

‘Incitement’

Galloway said that at the steps of the plane a representative of the foreign ministry in Egypt had told him he had been declared ‘persona non grata,’ was being deported and was not welcome to return to Egypt.

The Respect Party MP has been vocal in his criticism of Egyptian authorities in recent days after their decision not to allow the convoy of about 200 vehicles to arrive in Egypt through the port at Nuweiba.

Cairo insisted that the aid be sent back through Syria and then by ferry to the port of El-Arish on the Mediterranean.

Egypt’s foreign ministry later issued a statement on Friday confirming Galloway had been declared ‘persona non grata’ and would not be allowed to return to the country, accusing him of incitement over his criticism of the government.

An Egyptian police officer maintained that security personnel had only escorted Galloway for his own protection.

Arrests ordered

Seven other members of the Viva Palestinian convoy have also been ordered arrested after being accused of inciting riots in El-Arish.

The decision by the attorney-general in North Sinai means the activists could be detained after passing through the Rafah border crossing from Gaza.

It was not clear if they were in Egyptian custody on Friday.

Late on Tuesday, more than 50 people were wounded during a clash between Egyptian authorities and international members of the convoy.

The protests were sparked by an Egyptian decision to allow 139 vehicles to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing, but requiring a remaining 59 vehicles to pass via Israel.

Afterwards, clashes between Egyptian security forces and Palestinians waiting for the aid convoy led to the death of one Egyptian policeman.

Israel and Egypt have severely restricted travel to and from the Gaza Strip since Hamas seized power there in June 2007, after winning Palestinian legislative elections in 2006.

The blockade currently allows only very basic supplies into Gaza.

The siege has severely restricted essential supplies and placed Gazans in a dire situation, made worse by Israel’s military assault last winter that reduced much of the territory to ruins.

The violence began after two immigrants were wounded by local youths

Riots involving hundreds of immigrants have broken out in southern Italy, in protest against an attack on African farm workers by a gang of local youths, police said.

Dozens of immigrants, mostly from African nations, smashed car windows and set cars and rubbish bins of fire in the town of Rosarno in the Calabria region on Thursday night.

The rioters, shouting “we are not animals” and holding signs accusing Italians of racism, clashed with riot police, leading to seven arrests.

The Italian interior ministry said 14 people, including officers, protesters and residents, were injured in the riots.

The violence started after two immigrants were wounded when a number of white youths fired air rifles at them as they returned home from work.

‘Strongly provoked’

Immigrants work in the area as day labourers picking fruit and vegetables, with some 1,500 living in squalid conditions in abandoned factories with no running water or electricity

Human rights activists say they are exploited by organised crime groups.

Agazio Loiero, governor of the Calabria region, told Sky TV that the violence was “unacceptable” but the migrants have been “strongly provoked”.

Calabria is also the base of the international crime syndicate called ‘ndrangheta.

The combination of ethnic strife and organised crime activity has sparked violence before among immigrant communities in southern Italy.

In 2008, migrants rioted in the Naples area after six Ghanians were murdered in a gangland-style shooting blamed on the local Camorra crime syndicate.