President Franco claims Venezuela regime supports terrorist group in Paraguay

Paraguayan president Federico Franco accused the Venezuelan regime of Hugo Chavez of ‘direct and malicious’ involvement in his country’s affairs in support of a ‘terrorist and criminal’ gang, the Popular Army of Paraguay, EPP, which has committed kidnappings, assaults and killings.

Franco made the statements during an interview with journalist Patricia Janiot from CNN in Spanish. He added that he has documents and other evidence to support his accusation of Venezuela interference in support of EPP.

According to the Paraguayan president the Chavez regime organized and developed training programs for members of EPP that have been involved in kidnapping for ransom, killings of police forces, assaults, arson and other criminal actions in Paraguay.

Franco said that some EPP terrorist group members were invited to Venezuela with scholarships for alleged agriculture training programs but once there “were not precisely involved in learning to till the land but rather in the use of weapons and guerrilla tactics”.

“We have evidence and documents to support what I am saying now” added Franco.

Asked what his administration was doing to confront the EPP, Franco said that it is based on two stages: immediate action and the long term.

“The first is to establish industries and agricultural activities to the north of the country with an effective participation of the State, the other, long term to combat the subversives”.

The interview took place at the Time-Warner studios in New York.

President Franco also had a brief encounter with British PM David Cameron in the UN grounds out of the two leaders’ agenda.

The Paraguayan president also met with Bill Clinton at the Clinton Global Initiative foundation Monday night.

Bitter cost of fighting between PKK, military

2012 has been a bloody year so far in the battle between the military and the PKK as hundreds of militants and dozens of soldiers have been killed during the battle

A total of 330 militants and 88 army personnel have been killed in clashes.

Some 373 “terrorists have been neutralized” since February amid the deaths of 88 soldiers so far this year, the chief of General Staff said yesterday, noting that the military had conducted 974 operations within the country’s borders alone since April.

The statement came hours after two soldiers were killed and seven others were wounded in clashes in the eastern province of Hakkari.

Amid numerous recent clashes, however, the military brass refuted widespread claims that the Turkish armed forces were “stranded” in military bases and posts.

“Our operators are on active duty in rural areas,” the chief of General Staff said in a written statement. “Between April 1 and Sept. 1, 400 operations were conducted in Hakkari, 328 in Şırnak, 114 in Siirt and 132 in Tunceli.”

During these operations, 373 “terrorists were neutralized,” according to the statement.

“Some 330 terrorists were killed, 10 were wounded and 33 were captured alive, bringing the total number of neutralized terrorists inside the country to 373 from February to the end of August,” it said.

The same statement said 88 military personnel were killed this year as of Sept. 6. Fifty-four of those killed were professional army members, the statement added, in response to criticism that people on compulsory military service were sent out on operations without proper training.

“Troops that have 10 weeks of training are used in non-operational missions such as securing roads or observation missions,” the army said. “The military operations are conducted by professional troops, accompanied by village guards and special police forces.”

All operations that resulted in the death of military personnel are investigated both administratively and by the judiciary, the army said.

The numbers indicate a sharp increase in the number of PKK militants killed when compared to last year. According to official data, 234 PKK militants were killed in 2011, while a total of 137 army members and police officers were killed.

The army statement also said information gathered from sources is carefully inspected before it can be considered as intelligence to ensure the safety of military personnel.

The statement also criticized retired army members for commenting on the terror fight in the media. “The public is misinformed by using the remarks of people who had their duties in the region before 2000,” the statement said, adding that the Chief of Staff should be the sole source of informati

Pakistan Press Release - US drone kills seven militants in North Waziristan: officials

A US drone attack Sunday killed at least seven militants in North Waziriatan, officials said, days before the country’s intelligence chief visits Washington with the contentious raids likely to be discussed.

Attacks by unmanned American aircraft are deeply unpopular in Pakistan, which says they violate its sovereignty and fan anti-US sentiment, but US officials are said to believe the attacks are too important to give up.

In Sunday’s attack, the second in the month of Ramazan, missiles struck a compound in Khushhali Turikhel village of the troubled North Waziristan tribal district, which lies on the border with Afghanistan.

“US drones fired six missiles into a militant compound. At least seven militants were killed,” a security official told AFP.

“It is not immediately clear if there was an important militant killed in the attack.”The toll might rise as militants search for colleagues buried under the rubble of the compound, the official said, adding that missiles also hit and destroyed two militant vehicles.

Local intelligence officials confirmed the attack and casualties.

Khushhali Turikhel lies around 35 kilometres (20 miles) east of Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan which is considered a stronghold of militants.

Drone strikes are likely to be a major issue when Pakistan’s spymaster, Lieutenant General Zaheer ul-Islam, holds talks in Washington on August 1-3 with his CIA counterpart.

Washington regards Pakistan’s semi-autonomous northwestern tribal belt as the main hub of Taliban and al Qaeda militants plotting attacks on the West and in Afghanistan.

Ten militants were killed on Monday in a similar attack in Shawal area of North Waziristan. In a drone attack at the start of July, six militants were killed and an attack on June 4 killed 15 militants, including senior Al-Qaeda figure Abu Yahya al-Libi.

There has been a dramatic increase in US drone strikes in Pakistan since May, when a Nato summit in Chicago could not strike a deal to end a six-month blockade on convoys transporting supplies to coalition forces in Afghanistan.

On July 3 however, Islamabad agreed to end the blockade after the United States apologised for the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers in botched air strikes last November.

Islam’s trip on Wednesday marks the first Washington visit in a year by the head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence and signals a thaw in relations beset by crisis since US troops killed Osama bin Laden near Islamabad in May 2011.

In protest at US drone attacks, local Taliban and Pakistani warlord Hafiz Gul Bahadur have banned vaccinations in North and South Waziristan, putting 240,000 children in the region at risk.

They have condemned the immunisation campaign as a cover for espionage. In May, a Pakistani doctor was jailed for 33 years after helping the CIA find bin Laden using a hepatitis vaccination programme as a cover.

Irish Republican Terrorists, Scum, Cowards, Thugs & Murderous Criminals –

North Ireland’s militant groups to revive IRA

Northern Ireland’s deputy First Minister, former IRA commander Martin McGuinness (L), and Queen Elizabeth shakes hands, in what many saw as a symbol of peace.

Three of the four main militant nationalist groups in Northern Ireland said they are merging and reclaiming the banner of the IRA in a threat to intensify a campaign of violence against the continued British presence in the province.

The Real IRA has been joined by Republican Action against Drugs - a Londonderry vigilante group - and what a statement described as “non conformist republicans” - smaller independent groups operating in Belfast and rural areas of Northern Ireland.

It is the first time since the signing of a 1998 peace deals which copper-fastened the Provisional IRA’s ceasefire that most of the disparate republican groups still intent on violence has come together under a single leadership. But the Continuity IRA, the other main dissident nationalist group opposed to the peace deal, which largely ended three decades of violence in which over 3,600 people died, is not part of the new organization. The Continuity IRA said in a separate statement on July 26 that it had a new leadership and was intent on pursuing its own campaign for a united Ireland.

International monitors confirmed in 2005 that the Irish Republican Army had given up all its weapons. But sporadic violence has increased in recent years with the Real IRA, which was behind the murder of two British soldiers in 2009, leading the way. The new group said on July 26 it had formed a “unified structure, under a single leadership” and that it would be “subservient to the constitution of the Irish Republican Army” - the banner under which opposition to British involvement in Ireland has operated for more than a century.

New group includes armed dissidents

It includes independent dissidents who have been responsible for the murder of one policeman, injury of others and a series of attacks on officers in recent years.

Nationalist sources said the new group includes several hundred armed dissidents, including some former members of the Provisional IRA disenchanted with the peace process and their political wing - Sinn Fein.

Bulgaria FM 'Refutes' Al Qaeda Responsibility for Burgas Attack

The Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has refuted information from Israeli papers that the organization Qaedat al-Jihad has assumed responsibility for Wednesday's terrorist attack in Burgas.

This has been stated by Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Vesela Cherneva to Bulgaria's Focus Information Agency.

Earlier Saturday, Israeli papers the Israel Times and Yedioth Ahronoth stated that Qaedat al-Jihad, or Base of Jihad, had assumed responsibility via an e-mail to Lebanese paper Elnashra.

The organization, possibly an Al Qaeda unit, allegedly stated it organized the Burgas suicide bombing attack, which claimed the lives of 7, and vowed to pursue further acts of terror against Israel, the US and their allies.

In case the terrorist act has been organized by Al Qaeda, that would render less plausible claims by senior Israel statesmen, including President Shimon Peres and PM Benjamin Netanyahu that Hezbollah and Iran are responsible for the attack.

Stop Killing And Get Rich

More and more pro-Taliban tribal leaders in Afghanistan have been negotiating peace deals, and amnesty for themselves, with the government and each other. The senior Taliban leadership insists this isn't happening, and Pakistani military leaders have ordered the assassination of some of these pro-amnesty tribal chiefs. Some of the negotiations are taking place outside the country, in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. It's gotten to the point where even Pakistan is pretending to assist the process, rather than fighting it. While the Taliban urges their followers to just hold out until 2014, when most of the foreign troops will leave, this is not enough incentive to keep risking your life. The foreign troops and Afghan security forces increasingly find and kill, or capture, Taliban leaders. The feeling is that, while the deadly foreign soldiers will soon be gone, the Afghan government will probably survive. It's also believed that the foreign air support will remain behind. It's also realized that most Afghans hate the Taliban and the drug gangs. In short, the Taliban is seen as a bad bet for long-term success.

Taliban attacks in Afghanistan are down for the last two years, with fewer roadside bombs or gunmen engaging foreign and Afghan troops. But there are now more attacks on civilian targets. What this means is that the NATO campaign against drug gangs and Taliban base areas has reduced the ability of the Taliban to manufacture and plant roadside bombs or organize ground or rocket attacks. So resources have been shifted to terrorizing the civilian population.

The Taliban have long had a serious image problem. It is getting worse. For example, although the Taliban claim to be the enemy of corruption and violence, they cannot exist without either. Most Afghans recognize this, which is why the Taliban are so unpopular and and really only a threat in one small part of the country (Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where most Taliban come from). The Taliban bribe who they can and terrorize the rest. These are classic Afghan tactics, and everyone from warlords to bandits uses them. What makes the Taliban unique is the religious angle and the use of a drug gang alliance to raise cash. The Taliban use religion as another form of terror. Threatening people for not being Islamic enough is easy to do in Afghanistan, where religion has always been worn lightly but not ignored entirely. Yet the Taliban are generally perceived as thuggish hypocrites. They turn teenagers into suicide bombers and protect the drug trade that has turned millions of Afghans (and even more Pakistanis and Iranians) into opium or heroin addicts, yet demand that people stop watching movies or having dance music at weddings.

While the Taliban may be perceived as loathsome losers at the ground level, their leaders are clever enough to play the Western media. The Taliban faced a major problem with Western troops, who are unbeatable on the battlefield and very hard to kill in general, when they arrived in larger numbers over the past five years. In response, the Taliban strived to make every foreigner death a news event. Thus the preference for suicide bomb attacks in urban areas, where foreign journalists can easily cover the event. Outside the cities, the Taliban consider foreign journalists as sources of income, to be kidnapped (for ransom) on sight. So most foreign journalists stay in the cities, waiting for whatever media events the Taliban will bring to them.

The only "fighting" the Taliban do is against people they cannot bribe or coerce. Taliban death squads go after these people, who are usually uncomfortably effective police commanders or local leaders (elected or tribal). The Taliban don't want a lot of international publicity for this but do want Afghans to know what happens to those who do not cooperate. The Taliban do have the most effective assassination capability in the country. But the Taliban can really only use these killers effectively in the south, where Pushtuns are the majority. Occasional hits outside the south usually fail. The Taliban have, in effect, revived the ancient civil war between themselves (about 40 percent of the population) and the non-Pushtun (Tajik, Hazara, Turkic) majority.

The Pushtuns were always more united than their opponents and able to get the majority to let Pushtuns dominate what is now known as "Afghanistan." But because of the American intervention in late 2001, the Northern Alliance (of non-Pushtuns) were able to defeat the (Pushtun) Taliban and grab a majority of senior government jobs. This caused resentment among the Pushtuns and even less willingness to work with the national government. It helped the Taliban recruit, even though most Pushtuns want the Taliban to go away. And many of those who do work for the Taliban came to regret it. Many recruits believed the religious and "clean government" pitch and were dismayed when asked to kill women and children. Even the Taliban bosses got the blues.

The roadside bomb campaign failed, as it did in Iraq, and the U.S. campaign to hunt down and capture or kill Taliban leaders has devastated morale of the Taliban commanders. The senior leadership, safe across the border in Pakistan (Baluchistan, where American UAVs are not allowed to hunt terrorists), insist that the front line leaders be more aggressive. But that only got these leaders killed more quickly. It's much safer to plan and carry out attacks on civilian targets, which are not surrounded by American UAVs and electronic intelligence collecting aircraft. Increasingly Taliban leaders in Afghanistan wanted to negotiate some kind of deal, but the old timers in Baluchistan would not have it. So many Taliban field commanders, like many of their troops, are just quitting. There are still plenty of ambitious Pushtuns willing to take the money and kill for the cause, no matter what they are asked to do. But this makes the Taliban more of a fraud, bandits with pretentions to being saviors.

The Taliban turncoats believe that the Afghan government, which is notoriously corrupt, will allow local tribes to make deals with the drug gangs or (for a price) go into the drug business themselves. The national government will earn their way by dealing with foreigners intent on eliminating the lucrative drug trade and the widespread corruption in foreign aid programs. In short, the Afghans are telling each other to stop killing Afghans and concentrate on getting rich.