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Foreign Troops in Afghanistan Complicate Crisis: Iranian FM. Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said here on Saturday that the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan will only further complicate the ongoing crisis, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported. Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said here on Saturday that the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan will only further complicate the ongoing crisis, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported. Kharazi made the remarks while meeting visiting French Cooperation Minister Charles Josselin, noting that constant foreign military presence in Afghanistan has led to adverse results. He warned that "continuation of such policies only contributes to animosity among the people." Meanwhile, Kharazi stressed the need for all nations to assist in efforts to help the war-weary Afghan people and assured the French official of Iran's readiness to send relief aid to the conflict-shattered country. Echoing Kharazi's remarks, Josselin voiced France 's readiness to participate in efforts to rebuild Afghanistan and called for a broad-based government that takes the ethnic make-up of the country into account. While terming Iran's role in the area as "pivotal", the French minister stressed that the consultations between Tehran and Paris is necessary. He lauded Iran's assistance in providing relief aid to the Afghan people and called for continuation of such assistance and efforts to reconstruct the peace-hunger nation. Josselin, who arrived here Friday night from Uzbekistan, has already conferred with Iran's Majlis (parliament) speaker Mehdi Karrubi on the latest developments of the situation in Afghanistan and bilateral ties. French Foreign Ministry announced Tuesday that the deployment of international security and humanitarian missions in Afghanistan is in a complex situation as necessary discussions remain blocked among the Uzbek, Afghan and American sides. A French advance contingent of 58 troops has been waiting in Uzbekistan for being transported to their destination of northern Afghan city Mazar-e-Sharif. Some leaders of the Northern Alliance, now in control of the majority of Afghanistan territory, have openly rejected deployment of foreign troops in the central Asian country. **** Tajik Commander Sees Protracted War in Afghanistan. The fighting in Afghanistan would persist for a long time, especially in the regions south of Kandahar as Taliban forces are likely to wage a guerrilla war, said a high-ranking officer of Tajikistan's elite special forces Saturday. The fighting in Afghanistan would persist for a long time, especially in the regions south of Kandahar as Taliban forces are likely to wage a guerrilla war, said a high-ranking officer of Tajikistan's elite special forces Saturday. In an exclusive interview with Xinhua, Major General Sukhrob Kasilov, commander of the Operations Brigade of the Interior Ministry's Special Forces, said Taliban forces retreated to the mountainous regions in a bid to preserve their effective forces in face of the fierce U.S. bombing campaign. It would be very difficult for American forces to fight alone inside Afghanistan, said Kasilov in his office at a training base in the mountains about seven kilometers north of the capital. He warned that the presence of foreign troops inside Afghanistan would lead to unfavorable scenarios as the people of Afghanistan have never allowed foreign troops to stay on their territory. Kasilov, 40, was a teacher before joining the military in 1992 at the start of Tajikistan's civil war. In 1998, he foiled a military mutiny in northern Tajikistan in just three days, and was awarded a Jaguar car by President Emomali Rakhmonov. The commander said almost all the problems in Tajikistan are linked to neighboring Afghanistan, such as Islamic extremism and drug trafficking. He said Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network were also involved in the five-year civil war in Tajikistan. Once the Afghan problem is successfully settled, all the woes facing Tajikistan would also be easier to tackle, he added. The general, who studied special education at Moscow's Lenin Teachers' College, believes the key to winning any war is people, rather than hardware, especially in mountainous terrains, although his 3,000-strong troops are also undergoing training in high-tech fields. More than 90 percent of the officers of his brigade were trained in Russia, including in information warfare, the general said. The brigade has two MiG-8 and three MiG-24 helicopters and more than 100 tanks and armored vehicles at its disposal, which can be dispatched to any place inside Tajikistan within three to four hours at the order of the president, he said. Among other things, Kasilov trains his troops through past failures such as those recorded during the civil war and in Afghanistan, and gives special attention to discipline. "Discipline, discipline and discipline," he stressed, echoing one of the slogans on the billboards near the barracks: "Without discipline, the army will be non-existent. Discipline is the soul of the army." The general, who was wounded in the right leg during the civil war, is highly respected at the base, from Afghan war veterans to the newly recruited. At his order, a group of special forces showcased their newly mastered kungfu routines, and then several armored vehicles roared across the training grounds, whipping up dusts against the backdrop of smoke billowing from a bonfire lit up just a while ago. He told visitors that the brigade will stage major maneuvers early next month and more of his troops' skills and armor will be at display then. As visitors waved good-bye, another group of soldiers were seen climbing the mountain to the east of the ridge, possibly heading to one of the many mountaintop training grounds about 3,000 meters above sea level. In the distance, about a dozen horses could be seen grazing. They are part of the Special Forces' fleet of some 100 horses to be used for fighting in places difficult to be reached by motorized vehicles. **** China Expects Inte'l Nuclear Energy Cooperation. China hopes for broader and deeper international cooperation to exploit nuclear energy resources, which would provide a golden opportunity for nuclear power design, manufacturing and customer service providers around the world. China hopes for broader and deeper international cooperation to exploit nuclear energy resources, which would provide a golden opportunity for nuclear power design, manufacturing and customer service providers around the world. Sources at the annual Academic Meeting of the China Nuclear Society said that although China's six operating nuclear power stations have a combined installed generating capacity of 8.8 million kilowatts, the amount of electricity only accounts for one percent of the country's total power output. However, nuclear power generation accounts for 21.9 percent of the total power output in the United States, 33.4 percent in Japan and 77.4 percent in France. Experts here say that the global nuclear power industry has entered a new growth era. China has set the goal of expanding the installed generating capacity in nuclear power stations to 20 million kilowatts by 2010. Sources at the meeting disclosed that the Shanghai branch of the National Nuclear Society is conducting a feasibility study for a one-million-kilowatt nuke power station, which is expected to offer good opportunities for Sino-foreign cooperation. By 2020, nuclear power generation will account for five percent of China's total power output. However, in order to reach this goal, China needs mammoth investment in nuclear power energy production, utilization technology development and infrastructure construction. The second-phase construction of the Qinshan Nuclear Power Station, in east China's Zhejiang Province, has created a new way for maintaining China's independent nuclear power technology development while introducing foreign partnership for its construction. The Qinshan Nuclear Power Station is the first nuclear power plant designed and constructed independently by China. In the ongoing construction of four nuclear power plants, China has adopted technology and equipment from France, Russia and Canada. The third-phase project of the Qinshan plant will install two Candu-6 heavy-water nuclear power generating sets each with a capacity of 700,000 kilowatts. China has substantially improved the independent development and manufacturing ability of its nuclear power generation equipment. The industry's objective within this century is to keep in pace with international advanced technological standards and steadily develop the industry. With over 40 years of history, China's annual nuclear technology utilization can yield some 15 billion yuan-worth of output value, with a total of 300 companies and institutes involved. Of the total, nuclear agriculture generates 4 billion yuan and radiation chemical products are worth 2.5 billion yuan. Although the country's nuclear technology is at the international advanced level, it needs to be further industrialized to bring about profits. Experts estimate that the output value of nuclear technology utilization will amount to 140 billion yuan in 2010. **** Afghan Talks in Bonn Put off by One Day: U.N. U.N.-sponsored talks in Bonn on a future Afghan government will be postponed for one day after a closed meeting among the various Afghan factions, the United Nations said on Friday. The formal opening of the talks, originally scheduled for Monday, was delayed primarily for logistic reasons. U.N.-sponsored talks in Bonn on a future Afghan government will be postponed for one day after a closed meeting among the various Afghan factions, the United Nations said on Friday. The formal opening of the talks, originally scheduled for Monday, was delayed primarily for logistic reasons, said Ahmad Fawzi, spokesman for Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. special envoy for Afghanistan. "We want to allow people enough time to arrive," he said. The delay would also allow the 20 to 30 Afghan representatives expected to attend to confer among themselves and with U.N. officials before the formal opening of the conference. The talks are intended to map out the formation of a new government for the war-ravaged Central Asian nation following the collapse of Taliban rule after an intensive U.S. bombing campaign. Others represented at the conference will be former King Zahir Shah, the Pashtun tribes in southern Afghanistan who make up most of the population, and some four million refugees mostly living inIran and Pakistan. Brahimi, the U.N. special representative on Afghanistan, who left New York at the head of a delegation of 15 United Nations officials, will chair the talks, Fawzi said. The spokesman expected the 20 to 30 Afghan participants to arrive Sunday at Petersberg hotel, the conference center outside Bonn, but he could not yet name any of them, nor say how many would represent each group. "Mr. Brahimi is organizing a conference on Afghanistan for Afghans," he said, adding that "it will be a very flexible, very open conference." Asked what Brahimi hoped would come out of the talks, he said: "The measure of success will be if we can come up with a formula for a transitional government for Afghanistan." A German government spokesman said on Friday Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer would attend the opening ceremony at the invitation of the United Nations. **** World Working Harder to Stop Genocide, Annan Says. The world has begun slowly to step up its efforts to halt genocide and other war crimes, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a message to be delivered to a gathering of holocaust survivors in Rwanda this weekend. The world has begun slowly to step up its efforts to halt genocide and other war crimes, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a message to be delivered to a gathering of holocaust survivors in Rwanda this weekend. "Painfully and belatedly, the international community is trying to do more to prevent and punish genocide and crimes against humanity," Annan says in a prepared message, released here Friday, to Sunday's International Conference of Survivors of Holocaust and Genocide. He noted that tribunals are hard at work convicting at least some war criminals, while the Statute of the International Criminal Court is gaining more ratifications. "At last, the world is seeking an end to the culture of impunity," he said. In the past decade, in Rwanda and the Balkans, "we have witnessed mass killings, ethnic cleansing, the systematic use of rape as a weapon of warfare, and other atrocities visited upon men, women and children solely because of the ethnic, religious or national group to which they belonged," he said. Rwanda "has much to show the world about confronting the challenge of recovery," he said, adding that the African country is working hard to tackle the legacy of the past, "demonstrating that it is possible to reach beyond tragedy and rekindle hope." Annan also pointed out that genocide shaped the U.N.'s founding. "The men and women who drafted the Charter did so as the world was learning the full horror of the Holocaust perpetrated against Jews and others by the Nazi regime, giving added urgency to the task of building an institution intended not only to preserve world peace, but above all to protect human dignity," he said. Noting that the conference would aim to transform trauma into action to prevent a recurrence of war crimes, he pledged that the U.N. "will continue to be your close partner in this vital effort. " Genocide survivors from Cambodia to Armenia will convene in Rwanda next week for a six-day conference aimed at sharing their experiences. "The aim of the conference is for survivors' groups to share their experience of genocide and coping with post-genocide life," Antoine Mugesera, chairman of Ibuka, a coalition of Rwanda's genocide survivors' associations, said. The Kigali conference, which will be officially opened on Sunday, has been jointly organized by Ibuka and the New York-based Holocaust Survivors and their Children. Representatives of the Rwandan, Armenian, Cambodian, Bosnian, and Jewish communities have been invited to the conference, as well as institutions and researchers dealing with genocide studies. **** U.N. Confirms Delay in Talks On Afghanistan. Next week's planned talks on Afghanistan's political future, originally scheduled for Monday, will be delayed until Tuesday because of logistical problems, U.N. sources said on Friday. Next week's planned talks on Afghanistan's political future, originally scheduled for Monday, will be delayed until Tuesday because of logistical problems, U.N. sources said on Friday. The U.N.'s special envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, told German officials that the organization is having difficulty bringing so many Afghan faction leaders together at the same time. Despite the hitch, officials continued fevered preparations for the summit at Petersberg, a palace near Bonn. Andreas Michaelis, spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said he hoped that next week's discussions will enable leaders to build, as quickly as possible, a transition government for Afghanistan. Among those attending will be representatives of the Northern Alliance and of the "Rome Group" led by supporters of former Afghan King Mohammad Zahir, who lives in exile in Rome now. Representatives of the Afghans living in exile on the Mediterranean Island Cyprus will also take part. Another group will be representatives of Pashtuns who live now in Peshawar, Afghanistan. **** Israeli Missiles Strike Palestinian Car, Kill two. Israeli helicopters fired at least two missiles at a Palestinian car near the West Bank city of Nablus on Friday, killing two people, Palestinian security sources and medics said in Nablus. Israeli helicopters fired at least two missiles at a Palestinian car near the West Bank city of Nablus on Friday, killing two people, Palestinian security sources and medics said in Nablus. An emergency medical team at the scene found two charred bodies in the wreckage of the car which was smashed by the missiles. The bodies could not immediately be identified. The Israeli army declined comment. Israel has killed some 70 Palestinian militants it says are behind attacks on Israelis since the start of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000. Palestinians have condemned the killings -- which have also been censured internationally -- as assassinations. _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
