Bangladesh army says foils coup attempt

DHAKA: The Bangladesh army has foiled a coup planned against the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, a military spokesman said on Thursday.

Bangladesh has a history of coups with army generals running the impoverished South Asian nation for 15 years until the end of 1990.

“Specific information has been unearthed that some officers in military service have been involved in the conspiracy to topple the system of democratic governance,” Brigadier General Muhammad Masud Razzaq told reporters.

He said the officers had been identified. Some had been detained and would be presented before a military court.

Intelligence officials had repeatedly warned that “fanatic” religious militants with links to the military may try to oust Hasina.

“A band of fanatic officers had been trying to oust the politically established government. Their attempt has been foiled,” Razzaq said.

Hasina took power in early 2009 and has since faced threats from religious and other radical groups.

A revolt in the country’s paramilitary forces in February 2009 started in Dhaka and spread to a dozen other cities, killing more than 70 people, including 51 army officers.

The revolt was quelled after two days but the country has since been shadowed by fears of further uprisings.

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Nearly 1.3 million at risk from Afghanistan minefields

KABUL: Nearly 1.3 million people are at risk from mines buried across Afghanistan during past conflicts that remain despite 20 years of international clearance efforts, UN officials said Wednesday.

“We know exactly where these minefields are. They are all over the country,” said Alan Macdonald, programme director for the Mine Action Coordination Centre of Afghanistan, a UN body.

The explosives were buried during three recent conflicts: the 1980s war against the Russians, the early 1990s civil war, and during fighting between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban before it was ousted from power in 2001.

“There have been three key wars fought here. In all three of those wars, mines were laid in significant number,” said Macdonald.

“By the end of 2011, there remained 6,048 hazardous areas affecting 588 kilometres across 1,930 communities.”

According to the organisation’s statistics, 1,277,857 people were at risk.

Some 375 people were killed or injured by anti-personnel mines, anti-tank mines or unexploded ordinance in 2011 compared to a record high of 2,027 in 2001, said the organisation.

“In 20 years, we have cleared more than 500,000 anti-personnel mines and more than 22,000 anti-tank mines, and more than 15 million unexploded munitions,” said Macdonald, who described the clearance project as a “major success”.

“We know the characteristics of the minefields and the characteristics of the communities around which may lead to future victims. So we prioritise (clearance of the most dangerous minefields). That’s why we have the decline in the number of accidents.”

Despite some success, Afghanistan remains littered with buried explosives. And in recent years the Taliban have made cheap homemade bombs or improvised explosive devices (IEDs) their weapon of choice.

The international community spends about 90 million dollars a year to clear landmines in Afghanistan, one of the most heavily mined countries in the world.

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Snubbed by Pakistan, US envoy goes to India

WASHINGTON: A US envoy on a mission to discuss post-war Afghanistan will head on a previously unscheduled trip to New Delhi after India’s rival Pakistan refused his visit, officials said Wednesday.

US officials said Pakistan informed them that it did not want to receive special envoy Marc Grossman until Islamabad completes an ongoing review of relations with Washington, which have sunk to rock-bottom in recent months.

The State Department said Grossman would head Friday to India, whose support for Afghanistan and President Hamid Karzai is deeply resented by many Pakistanis who accuse New Delhi of trying to use the issue against Islamabad.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that the United States was not trying to send any message to Pakistan through Grossman’s trip to India and reiterated that he would have liked to visit.

“We made clear that we would welcome a stop by Ambassador Grossman in Islamabad on this trip,” she told reporters.

“The Pakistanis are looking hard internally at our relationship. They asked us to give them time to do that, so he will not be going there on this trip,” she said.

Nuland said that the United States welcomed efforts by India, which has given more than $2 billion in aid to Afghanistan and plans to take a larger role training Afghan troops and security forces.

“We believe that India has a role to play in supporting a democratic, prosperous future for Afghanistan,” she said.

Pakistan has launched a review of its relations with Washington amid a drastic deterioration of ties, particularly after US forces killed Osama bin Laden during a unilateral raid in the garrison town of Abbottabad last year.

Islamabad has demanded an apology and curbed cooperation after a Nato air strike near the Afghan border on November 26 killed 24 Pakistani troops. President Barack Obama has voiced regret but stopped short of a full apology.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last week that Grossman would seek to advance reconciliation in Afghanistan and talk to President Karzai about a resumption of preliminary talks with the Taliban.

The United States wants to withdraw most forces from Afghanistan in 2014, ending more than a decade of war. But many US officials have deep concerns about the role of Pakistan, believing its intelligence services maintain ties with Islamic extremists inside Afghanistan.

After New Delhi, Grossman heads to Afghanistan on Saturday for talks with Karzai. He is also visiting Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates on his nearly two-week trip.

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Avalanches kill 29 in northeastern Afghanistan

KABUL: Avalanches have killed at least 29 people in Afghanistan’s mountainous northeast as rescuers struggled to reach the worst-hit areas cut off by heavy snows, officials said.

The Afghan National Disaster Management Agency said Thursday that at least 40 more people have been injured in a series of avalanches since Monday in Badakhshan province.

Roads outside the provincial capital of Faizabad are blocked by at least six feet of snow, the agency said.

Afghanistan’s harsh winters and mountainous terrain in the north make avalanches a danger each year. In February 2010, an avalanche killed at least 171 people near the Salang Pass, a major route through the Hindu Kush mountains that connects the capital of Kabul to the north of the country.

The Nato security force in Afghanistan said Thursday that one of its service members died after an explosion in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday. A coalition statement did not provide the nationality of the service member, nor any details of the attack.

On Wednesday, dozens of civilians, coalition troops and Afghan security forces were killed and wounded when a suicide attacker blew himself up in a bazaar.

Daud Ahmadi, a provincial spokesman, said a bomber on a motorcycle killed 12 Afghans, including two policeman, and wounded at least 23 other people in Kajaki district of Helmand province.

A statement released late Wednesday by Nato said the Kajaki explosion killed and wounded dozens of Afghan civilians, Afghan national security forces and coalition troops. The Wednesday statement did not give details about how many foreign troops had been killed or wounded.

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Norway security chief quits in Pakistan agents row

OSLO: Norway’s internal security chief resigned late on Wednesday after revealing confidential information that the country had intelligence agents in Pakistan, government officials said.

Janne Kristiansen, already under fire for missing signs that a far-right extremist was preparing attacks that killed 77 people in July, said the small Nordic nation had operatives in Pakistan during a parliamentary hearing earlier on Wednesday.

Kristiansen, the head of the agency in charge of Norway’s internal security (PST), did not say why the agents were there.

But Norway, a close ally of the United States, has hundreds of troops in the Nato-led operation in Pakistan’s neighbour Afghanistan.

“PST head Janne Kristiansen has informed the justice minister that she will resign her position,” the justice ministry said in a statement.

“The reason is the possible breach of confidentiality through the disclosure of classified information.”

According to a transcript of the parliamentary hearing, Kristiansen made the comments in reply to questions on whether Norway should have contacts with Pakistani intelligence.

She said the intelligence agency operated by the Norwegian armed forces, the E service, already worked in Pakistan.

“The E service has its representatives in these countries, so we cooperate via the E service about this country,” she said.

The Norwegian daily VG said on its website that this exchange about Pakistan was the reason why the security chief resigned.

A government source told Reuters the VG news report was correct.

Kristiansen had already attracted controversy for saying her agency could not have done more to prevent the attacks by Islamophobe Anders Behring Breivik, who committed the worst attacks in the Nordic country since World War Two.

“Not even Stasi-Germany would have managed to isolate and catch this person,” she told state broadcaster NRK three days after Breivik’s double attack.

“You would almost have had to have a chip inside the head of every single Norwegian, to capture all thoughts.”

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