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THE STANS
Civilian deaths threaten US pact: Afghan president
by Staff Writers
Kabul (AFP) May 7, 2012

US hostage Weinstein appears in Qaeda video: SITE
Hong Kong (AFP) May 7, 2012 - US hostage Warren Weinstein has appeared in an Al-Qaeda video for the first time since he was kidnapped in Pakistan in August last year.

According to the US monitoring service SITE, the two minute, 40 second video was posted on jihadist forums by Al-Qaeda's media arm as-Sahab on Sunday. There is no indication of when the video was made.

The elderly Weinstein, dressed in a traditional Pakistani tunic and speaking impassively to camera in English, tells his wife Elaine that "I'm fine, I'm well, I'm getting all my medications, I'm being taken care of".

He also urges US President Barack Obama to respond to the demands of his kidnappers.

Weinstein was snatched after gunmen tricked their way into his Lahore home on August 13, days before he was due to return to the United States.

He was country director for US-based consultancy J.E. Austin Associates, which does contracting work with the US Agency for International Development. He suffers from asthma, heart problems and high blood pressure.

Among its demands in exchange for Weinstein, Al-Qaeda has called for the release from US custody of "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdul Rahman, Ramzi Yousef and Sayyid Nosair, who are tied to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Al-Qaeda had also demanded the release of the family of Osama bin Laden. The wives and children of the terror group's late founder were deported from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia last month.

"If you accept the demands, I live; if you don't accept the demands, then I die," Weinstein told Obama in the video, which showed the hostage sitting in a room in front of a white sheet, behind a table with books and food on it.


Afghan President Hamid Karzai summoned the NATO commander and the US ambassador on Monday to warn that civilian casualties in military operations threatened a strategic pact he has signed with the US.

Tens of civilians -- including women and children -- had been killed in NATO bombardments in four provinces since Saturday, a statement from Karzai's office charged.

The president warned that if Afghan lives were not protected the Strategic Partnership Agreement he signed with US President Barack Obama last week would "lose its meaning", the statement said.

"The Afghan president this evening summoned NATO Commander General John Allen and US Ambassador Ryan Crocker for an emergency meeting at the Presidential Palace," the president's office said.

He "expressed his concerns about the civilian casualties incurred by our people in four provinces" -- Logar and Helmand in the south, Kapisa in the east and Badghis in the northwest.

The president said civilian casualties always hurt Afghan-American relations, adding that Afghanistan had signed the strategic pact with the US to prevent such incidents and safeguard the lives of Afghans.

"If the lives of Afghans are not protected, the strategic partnership will lose its meaning," the statement quoted the president as saying.

The pact covers relations between the two countries when US-led NATO forces helping Karzai's government fight a Taliban insurgency pull out in 2014.

Allen said after the meeting that he assumed personal responsibility for incidents in which civilians were killed and expressed condolences to the families involved, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) told AFP.

"He said he will fully investigate these incidents and report back to President Karzai," the spokesman said. "We don't have all the facts right now."

A NATO airstrike targeting militants in Badghis province on Saturday night killed fifteen civilians, including women and children in Joikar village, Bala Murghab district, provincial member of parliament Qazi Abdul Rahim told AFP.

An ISAF spokesman said earlier, ahead of the meeting with Karzai, that an airstrike killed three insurgents in an attack in the area, but reports indicated no civilians were involved.

In a separate incident, in the volatile Helmand province in southern Afghanistan on Friday, six civilians were killed in a NATO airstrike, an Afghan official said.

"Six people -- a woman, two boys and three girls -- were killed in a foreign forces airstrike on Friday in Sangin district," provincial spokesman Daud Ahmadi told AFP.

ISAF said they were aware of the allegation and "an investigation is under way".

Civilian casualties have always been a sensitive issue in the US-led war against a Taliban insurgency and have often been the cause of tense relations between Kabul and Washington.

The number of civilians killed has risen steadily each year for the past five years, reaching a record of 3,021 in 2011, the great majority caused by militants, according to UN statistics.

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Afghan president raps NATO, US over civilian deaths
Kabul (AFP) May 7, 2012 - Afghan President Hamid Karzai summoned the NATO commander and the US ambassador on Monday to express concern about civilian deaths in recent operations, his office said in a statement.

Karzai warned that if Afghan lives were not protected the Strategic Partnership Agreement he signed with US President Barack Obama last week would lose its meaning, the statement said.

Tens of civilians -- including women and children -- had been killed in NATO bombardments in four provinces since Saturday, the statement charged.

"The Afghan president this evening summoned NATO Commander General John Allen and US Ambassador Ryan Crocker for an emergency meeting at the Presidential Palace," the statement said.

He "expressed his concerns about the civilian casualties incurred by our people in four provinces" -- Logar and Helmand in the south, Kapisa in the east and Badghis in the northwest.

The president said civilian casualties always hurt Afghan-American relations, adding that Afghanistan had signed the strategic pact with the US to prevent such incidents and safeguard the lives of Afghans.

"If the lives of Afghans are not protected, the strategic partnership will lose its meaning," the statement quoted the president as saying.

Civilian casualties have always been a sensitive issue in the US-led war against a Taliban insurgency and have often been the cause of tense relations between Kabul and Washington.

The number of civilians killed has risen steadily each year for the past five years, reaching a record of 3,021 in 2011, the great majority caused by militants, according to UN statistics.



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