"Exploiting civilian casualties and often causing civilian casualties are a fundamental part of the Taliban strategy and it's a measure of the ruthlessness with which they fight," he said.

General David McKiernan said the provincial governor asked for a U.S. air strike to help Afghan police who were in a long battle Sunday with a fairly large Taliban force, which had beheaded three local officials, reported VOA.

The officials said Tuesday that bombs dropped the night before hit rooms full of women, children and old men who gathered after fighting between militants and Afghan and coalition forces in Farah province.

“Preparing for this operating environment will pull the Army, and the military writ large, in two very different directions,” she told the roughly 200-person audience at the Army Leader Forum at the Pentagon.

The president confirmed the fears of western diplomats by registering himself as a candidate in the 20 August poll along with Mohammad Fahim, whom he has selected as one of his two would-be vice-presidents.

The former militia leader, who goes by the honorary title of Marshal Fahim, is disliked by many Afghans who are suspicious of the wealth he has acquired since 2001 and disliked by the west for his opposition to the disbandment of the private armies of Afghanistan's warlords.

In a message to mark the annual World Press Freedom Day, Mr. Ban says that attacks on journalists remain “shockingly high” in number.

Conservative candidate Mohsen Rezaei, speaking to reporters in Iran's capital, also criticized hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his handling of the faltering economy and said his questioning of the Holocaust has "no benefit."

The Centcom will also have complete control over US military assistance for Pakistan and will not have to consult other US departments or agencies before disbursing those funds.

Traditionally such military aid flows through the State Department and is subject to Foreign Assistance Act restrictions.

The figures from the Iraqi Health Ministry showed 105 Iranians were also killed in Iraq violence this month. The civilian death toll was up from 180 in March.

"The prior administration tried to isolate them, tried to support opposition to them, tried to turn them into international pariahs. It didn't work," Clinton told foreign service officers at a meeting at the State Department.

Nations such as China, Russia and Iran were making gains in Latin America, she said, forging close relationships with leaders who had been hostile to Washington during the Bush administration.

"In fact, if you look at the gains particularly in Latin America that Iran is making and China is making, it is quite disturbing. They are building very strong economic and political connections with a lot of these leaders," she said

The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, whose mandate comes from the Afghan constitution, also says “torture and cruel, inhumane and belittling behaviour” is widespread among that country's law-enforcement agencies. It says Afghan police are alleged to be responsible for more than 65 per cent of the incidents in its study.

"We are not even talking about" changing the withdrawal plan, an administration official told McClatchy Newspapers. "The situation would have to get a lot worse for that to change."

The plan sets out the framework for Britain's aid to the country for the next four years with a pledge of over £127 million a year in assistance between now and 2013, a total of £510 million.

The attorney general says the U.S. has not decided which detainees they want to send to specific countries, adding that those decisions are weeks away.

Judge Baltasar Garzon, who once tried to extradite former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, said in a ruling he would investigate both those who carried out torture and those who ordered or cooperated with it.

"President Obama's actions - within 48 hours of taking office - to close Guantánamo within a year, end secret CIA detentions and break with the secrecy of the Bush administration was very welcome," said Irene Khan, secretary general of Amnesty International.

According to U.S. military officials, the exceptions to the timeline — agreed upon in the security agreement signed late last year — would focus on Mosul and certain parts of Baghdad. The details were reportedly part of Monday’s scheduled meeting of top U.S. and Iraqi leaders on how to carry out the security agreement.

Iran policy adviser Dennis Ross is expected to visit the Middle East to meet with representatives from Gulf Cooperation Council member states, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The Obama administration has made diplomatic overtures to Iran in an attempt to defuse a standoff over nuclear work in the Middle Eastern state that could support nuclear-weapon development. Tehran has insisted its atomic ambitions are strictly peaceful.

The CIA had previously said it would only turn over documents from August 2002 that relate to the content of the videotapes. But U.S. District Court Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York today ordered the CIA to produce records from April through December 2002 that relate to the content of the tapes, as well as documents from April 2002 through June 2003 that related to the destruction of the tapes and information about the persons and reasons behind their destruction.

She characterized the latest violence as the last gasp of “rejectionists” who feared that the government would succeed in creating a united and peaceful Iraq. The suicide bombings, she said, are “in an unfortunately tragic way, a signal that the rejectionists fear that Iraq is going in the right direction.”

The statement, to be released by EU foreign ministers on April 27, urged a negotiated settlement with Iran and made no explicit call for the tighter economic sanctions that the U.S. is considering.

As he said, "Afghanistan should not become the real test of foreign policy of the President Obama. We need to look at the radical reasons why there are extremists in the world opposing America."

The Bush administration argued the government could hold "those individuals who were part of, or supporting, forces engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners and allies." The Obama administration modified that argument to say prisoners can only be detained if their support for al-Qaida, the Taliban or "associated forces" was "substantial."

"We gather today to mourn the loss of so many lives and celebrate those who saved them, honor those who survived, and contemplate the obligations of the living," he said. "It is the grimmest of ironies that one of the most savage, barbaric acts of evil in history began in one of the most modernized societies of its time, where so many markers of human progress became tools of human depravity.

But the scene at Camp Falcon told a different story: six years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, the Americans not only vastly outnumbered the Iraqis, but they were giving orders and providing vital logistical support.

"We actually believe that by following the diplomatic path we are on, we gain credibility and influence with a number of nations who would have to participate in order to make the sanctions regime as tight and as crippling as we would want it to be," Clinton told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Opening Remarks Before the House Foreign Affairs Committee -Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State
Washington, DC
April 22, 2009

They said people were now short of drinking water and food, and vulnerable to disease. More casualties are also a possibility because elderly residents have been left exposed to the elements.

The repairs took about nine months to complete and cost $2.8 million, covering nearly 40 miles of canal spanning four districts. The contractor repaired 850 gates and installed five new siphons to help to control water flow and double the irrigation capability.

PRESS SECRETARY ROBERT GIBBS AND DAN RESTREPO, SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND SENIOR DIRECTOR FOR WESTERN HEMISPHERE AFFAIRS

James S. Brady Press Briefing Room

The first quake, with a magnitude of 5.4, struck shortly after midnight in Nangarhar province, President Hamid Karzai said in a statement.