President Hamid Karzai accepts decision[ 471 ]

Karzai calls for unity, end to corruption in Afghanistan

Hamid Karzai addresses a press conference at the Presidential Palace on November 3.

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN, November 3, 2009... 7:22 a.m. EST) -- Making his first public appearance Tuesday since being declared the winner in a disputed election, Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai vowed to stamp out corruption and work with the Taliban in his third term in office.

"Afghanistan is accused with mass corruption. I will try to clean it up," Karzai said.

After three decades of war, Afghanistan faces challenges, he said.

"It is stepping forward towards a more institutional legal order while still struggling against terrorism and the menaces that affect us all. We are aware of difficulties of our governance and the environment in which we live. We'll keep trying to do our best to address the questions ... facing Afghanistan," he said.

In addressing the nation's insecurity, Karzai said he would engage the Taliban.

"The call for peace, the call for security of Afghanistan is one of the main desires of the Afghan people," Karzai said. "I would also call to the Taliban to ... join the government ... with respect to the Afghan constitution."

Video: Karzai accepts decision

But a Taliban spokesman said claimed success in helping disrupt the election, which he called a "fraud."

Zabiullah Mujahid said: "The fraud election was in Washington, not in Afghanistan. The people of Afghanistan did not vote to select their president. All the people understand that it was a fraud election.

"We got successes in our struggle against the election. The government was not able to run the election and they announced the president."

Karzai admitted that a runoff would have been better for the country, but he said his mission now will be to form an all-inclusive government with even those who opposed him.

"I hope all Afghans to be part of the government and the Afghan system," he said in an attempt to unify the nation after a divisive election.

Afghans went to the polls on August 20, in a vote marred by widespread fraud. Karzai had initially claimed victory, but two months after the vote, a U.N.-backed panel of election monitors threw out nearly a third of his votes, citing fraud. That left Karzai short of a majority, and he eventually agreed to a runoff.

But Karzai was declared the winner Monday after his chief challenger Abdullah Abdullah dropped out of the runoff that would have taken place Saturday.

Abdullah had called for the resignations of top election officials and politicians to avert electoral fraud in the runoff. He argued that the commissioners, who were hired by Karzai, cannot be impartial.

But that request was not met, Abdullah said Sunday, and he did not believe a transparent election was possible.

A runoff could have been held with just one candidate, but commission president Azizullah Lodin said electoral officials decided to cancel the second round of voting for several reasons, including security and money.

Some observers say that in his third term, Karzai's real test will be whether he can form a government that is viewed as legitimate in the international community, and more, importantly, at home.

U.S. President Barack Obama called Monday for a "new chapter" of improved governance in Afghanistan now that Karzai's re-election as president is complete.

"Although the process was messy, I'm pleased to say that the final outcome was determined in accordance with Afghan law, which I think is very important," Obama said.

Moscow : an impressive optical effect,[ 470 ]

Paranormal Alien Cloud Hovers Above Moscow

Source: PRAVDA. RU

Eyewitnesses made a curious video of a very strange cloud hovering above Moscow. The video, which was posted on the Mobile Reporter website, shows a cloud which looks like a huge white-rimmed whirlpool.

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The video was made on October 7, on the Moscow Ring Road.

The phenomenon, which many Muscovites could observe in the western part of the city, is an optical effect, meteorologists said.

“This is purely an optical effect, although it does look impressive. If you look closer, you can see sun rays coming through that cloud. Most likely, the sun was setting when the video was being made. If you observe clouds regularly, you may see many other astonishing things. Clouds of the same class may look absolutely different in different areas. Several fronts have been passing through Moscow recently, there was an intrusion of the Arctic air too, the sun was shining from the west – this is how the effect was produced,” a meteorologist said.

Another meteorologist said that there was a twister forming above Moscow because of several weather fronts in the area. However, the twister did not appear.

“The phenomenon has nothing to do with industrial emissions. They could not produce such an effect against the background of the current weather conditions. If something happens, there is the smog effect, but it appears only when the weather is quiet for a long time. The wind in Moscow has been quite strong recently,” a weather forecaster said.

Medvedev, Stalin's Brutal regime...[ 469 ]

Medvedev blasts Stalin defenders

By Richard Galpin BBC News, Moscow One of Stalin's slogans was recently restored to a Moscow metro station (BBC,, 14:47 GMT, Friday, 30 October 2009) Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has made an outspoken attack on those seeking to rehabilitate former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Millions of Soviet citizens died under Stalin's rule and Mr Medvedev said it was not possible to justify those who exterminated their own people. He also warned against efforts to falsify history and defend repression. Some Russian politicians have recently tried to portray Stalin in a more positive light. Under President Medvedev's predecessor, current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Stalin was often promoted as an efficient leader who turned the Soviet Union into a superpower. Brutal regime Mr Medvedev made the unusually critical comments in a videoblog posted on the Kremlin's website. It appeared on the day the country is supposed to honour millions of people killed under Stalin's brutal regime which lasted from the late 1920s until his death in 1953. President Medvedev said Stalin's mass killings could not be justified Mr Medvedev said it was impossible to imagine the scale of repression under Stalin when whole groups of people were eliminated and even stripped of their right to be buried. The president said there were now attempts to justify the repression of the past, and he warned against the falsification of history. All this flies in the face of the current trend to promote Stalin as an effective manager and a leader who transformed the Soviet Union. Under Mr Putin, the order was given for school history books to be re-written, highlighting Stalin's achievements. In Moscow there is now even a Stalin-themed cafe and a metro station with one of Stalin's famous slogans on its walls. In northern Russia a historian investigating crimes committed by the former Soviet dictator was recently arrested. It would appear there is a split within the Russian leadership on this highly sensitive issue.

U.S. attempts to lure away fighters rejected [ 468 ]

Taliban leader rejects U.S. attempts to lure away fighters with money

Sen. Carl Levin, Armed Services Committee chief, says Afghan leaders and the U.S. military think payoffs could work.

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN, October 30, 2009 8:15 a.m. EDT) -- A top Taliban political leader delivered a message Friday to President Obama, calling his attempt to lure away Taliban fighters with money "an old weapon that has failed already."

"The Mujahedeen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan are not mercenaries and employed gunmen like the armed men of the invaders and their surrogates," Mullah Brader Akhund said in the statement. "This war will come to an end when all invaders leave our country and an Islamic government based on the aspirations of our people is formed in the country."

Akhund is the deputy emir of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which is the political arm of the Taliban.

He was referring to the Taliban reintegration provision, part of the $680 billion defense appropriation bill that Obama signed Wednesday to pay for military operations in the 2010 fiscal year.

The provision would separate local Taliban from their leaders, paying the fighters to quit the organization, replicating a program used to neutralize the insurgency against Americans in Iraq, according to the Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Akhund said 19th century British invaders and Soviet fighters in the 1980s tried the same tactic, unsuccessfully.

He said the Taliban consider the U.S. measure "a sign of weakness and complete despondency of the enemy."

Obama is considering whether to approve the request from his top commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, for as many as 40,000 additional troops in Afghanistan. The decision is being weighed against the backdrop of suddenly spiraling U.S. military fatalities. Fifty-six American troops have died in Afghanistan in October, the highest U.S. monthly toll since the war began eight years ago.

Video: Should we pay the Taliban?

Obama meets Friday with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who will tell the U.S. leader how a large deployment to Afghanistan would affect the military.

Akhund warned Obama against maintaining a military presence in Afghanistan, saying it "will only deepen your economic crisis and will harm your international reputation."

"Pull all your forces out of our prideful country and put an end to the game of colonialization by shedding the blood of innocent Muslim people under the unjustified name of terrorism," he said.

The Taliban reintegration provision is part of the Commander's Emergency Response Program, which is now receiving $1.3 billion. CERP funding also is intended for humanitarian relief and reconstruction projects at commanders' discretion.

"Afghan leaders and our military say that local Taliban fighters are motivated largely by the need for a job or loyalty to the local leader who pays them and not by ideology or religious zeal," Levin said in a Senate floor speech on September 11. "They believe an effort to attract these fighters to the government's side could succeed, if they are offered security for themselves and their families, and if there is no penalty for previous activity against us."

While the plan has a "reasonable chance for some success," analyst Nicholas Schmidle said that it may not be a long-term solution.

"So long as the Americans are keenly aware of this, you're buying a very, very, very temporary allegiance," said Schmidle, an expert on the Afghanistan-Pakistan region for the nonpartisan New America Foundation. "If that's the foundation for moving forward, it's a shaky foundation."

Peter Bergen, CNN security analyst, said the idea of paying off Taliban members to quit is nothing new.

"There's been an amnesty program for low-level Taliban in place for many years now, and thousands of people have taken advantage of it," he said. "So this is not entirely a new idea. The idea of bribing people, local guys, to come over. ... It's one of the most cost-effective ways to get people to lay down their arms, either to negotiate a peace or coerce them."

McChrystal has backed the Taliban reintegration plan, saying that most are not ideologically or even politically motivated.

"Most of the fighters we see in Afghanistan are Afghans, some with [a] foreign cadre with them," he said in a July 28 Los Angeles Times interview. "Most are operating for pay; some are under a commander's charismatic leadership; some are frustrated with local leaders."

UK: Her Majesty's Navy has cancelled plans [ 467 ]

Royal Navy cuts: ships as reflection of state might

© RIA Novosti 15:39...30/10/2009

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti military commentator Ilya Kramnik) - Her Majesty's Navy has cancelled plans to build the aircraft carrier Prince of Wales, newswires announced in the middle of the week. One of the most ambitious British navy programs in recent decades will be significantly scaled back. How will this reflect on the operational capability of the navy and what does the British navy generally consist of today?

Two aircraft carriers named the Queen Elizabeth and the Prince of Wales - customary names for large British ships - with displacement of 65,000 tons and an air group of 40 F-35 fighters and 10 helicopters, were planned to replace ships on stand-by such as the Invincible, which are much smaller in terms of size and capabilities. For more than a decade, there had been discussion of building new ships to be developed jointly with France, and this year the work on their construction finally began.

Endless disputes about the ships' cost, which was constantly growing - from two to five billion pounds sterling for two ships - as well as disputes about their designation, led to the planned commissioning date being constantly moved forward. Initially, the navy was counting on receiving the new ships in 2012-14 and then in 2013-16. Last summer, the timeframe was quoted as 2016-18.

The cost of the aircraft was rising in parallel with the cost of the ships. Currently, the price of one F-35 fighter is approaching 90 million pounds, which means that the cost of the air groups, including reserve and training aircraft, can be estimated at approximately 10 billion pounds.

As a result, a decision was made to cancel construction of the second ship in the series, the Prince of Wales. But the form of this cancellation is not yet clear. According to some sources, the ship will not be built at all. Others say the ship will be built but will be used as an assault helicopter carrier, which will make it possible to save several billion pounds on its air wing.

One way or another, it seems that when ships such as the Invincible are decommissioned, the number of aircraft carriers in the British navy will be reduced to one.

Therefore, it is to be expected that the U.K. will also cut its escort ship construction program - the destroyers and frigates designated for escorting the new aircraft carriers.

The continual reduction of the Royal Navy has been in progress for decades. It began even before World War II, when this navy was the largest in the world, and became more drastic in the late 1940s to early 1950s, when the British colonial empire was falling apart, with the navy that had created it joining it in oblivion.

Britain, having officially become a victor in World War II, became a second-tier nation after the war, and the U.S. secured the status of the leader of the western world.

The main ships to be cut were the larger ones - battleships and cruisers at first, followed by aircraft carriers. In the 1950s, after the cutbacks, the British navy still remained a rather formidable force capable of operations far from its home shores, but this was only the beginning of the process.

A new blow, after which the British navy definitively lost its greatness, came in the 1970s, when the Royal Navy cancelled the construction of the full-fledged aircraft carriers of the 1940s and decided to build light aircraft carriers such as the Invincible.

Nevertheless, even after these cutbacks, the Royal Navy was able to withstand the Falklands War of 1982, making an integral contribution to Britain's victory.

Today, however, the navy has been halved once again. In 1985, it had 172 ships. In 2009, it has only 85. Escort ships have been reduced particularly drastically, from 56 to 23. In fact, the Royal Navy is now not much larger than the battle group used in the Falklands War.

Needless to say, the combat strength of modern ships is much higher than the ships of previous generations. Nevertheless, not everything depends on the strength of one combat unit. Today in the western world, only one great navy remains - the U.S. Navy, the strength of which surpasses all the other western navies combined, as was once the case with the Royal Navy. If anything, this is the best illustration of the hypothesis that only the most wealthy and influential powers can create a large navy.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

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