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Turkey is emerging as the new player in the unfolding Afghanistan peace process. As Afghanistan and Pakistan work on a peace roadmap, with the active assistance and blessings of London and Washington, Turkey has stepped in, even offering to host senior Taliban leaders released by Pakistan for reconciliation talks with the Afghan government. Although India is not part of the deal, India will be deeply affected by the outcome of whatever political process is implemented in Afghanistan. And with a strong presence on the ground in Afghanistan, India will be keen to ensure its own red lines about the accommodation...

Pakistanis Reject U.S. Partnership By JANE PERLEZ Published: September 30, 2009 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Even with the arrival of the Obama administration and the prospect of substantially increased aid, more Pakistanis — an overwhelming majority — continued to reject the United States as a partner to fight militancy in their country, a new poll finds. The survey, conducted by the Washington-based International Republican Institute, underscored the difficulties the Obama administration faced in its efforts to tamp down Islamic militancy in this strategically vital nation. The I.R.I. is a nonprofit pro-democracy group affiliated with the Republican Party and financed by the...

Zardari took 'massive secret commissions' for securing French submarine deal: Report 2011-01-15 16:00:00 Official Pakistani documents, detailing how President Asif Ali Zardari benefited from massive, secret payments connected to the sale of French submarines to Pakistan, have been seized as evidence by a Paris magistrate investigating a suspected widespread scam surrounding the deal. The documents, published by Mediapart, show that the payments to Zardari and others took place on the fringes of the sale of three Agosta-class submarines by the French defence contractor, the DCN, to Pakistan in the 1990s. The French sale, which succeeded against rival offers by Swedish...

AFP - Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari was expected in Moscow on Wednesday for talks with Russian leaders on his first major foreign visit since the killing of Osama bin Laden by US forces. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will host Zardari for talks on Thursday at the Kremlin where officials from the two countries were also expected to sign agreements on cooperation in agriculture, aviation and energy, a spokesman for the Pakistan Embassy in Moscow told AFP. "Economics will be the focus of the visit," said the spokesman, Raja Abdul Qayyum. The three-day visit to Russia will be Zardari's first...

Storm gathers over Pakistan "coup" memo Anita Joshua Pakistan's Ambassador to the U.S. Husain Haqqani is reported to have tendered his resignation on Wednesday (American time) following allegations that he had submitted a memo on behalf of President Asif Ali Zardari to former U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen to pre-empt a possible coup in the wake of the May 2 operation against al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden. However, several hours after news broke of the resignation offer made during the night (Pakistani time), there was no word from the Government on whether it had been accepted or not....

Suspicions by Pakistan's powerful army that the country's civilian leadership is growing too close to the United States are fueling a political crisis that analysts here believe threatens the survival of the government and could divert attention from the battle against Islamic extremists. Military officials believe that secretly taped conversations between Pakistani President Asif Zardari and his ambassador in Washington, prove that it was at Zardari's insistence that a $1.5 billion U.S. aid package passed by Congress in September contained several provisions that angered the Pakistani military. The military publicly protested the aid package last month. "The reaction (from the...