KABUL: A few months ago, the relationship between the new U.S. administration and the veteran Afghan president looked like a bad marriage, with both sides using every opportunity to complain about each other in public.But when Barack Obama and Hamid Karzai meet this week in Washington for the first time since Obama's election last year, expect the two presidents to get along fine. After months of berating Karzai's government as ineffectual and tolerant of corruption, U.S. officials have stopped chiding the man Washington helped install in power in 2001. Karzai, for his part, has toned down what had been increasingly angry complaints about U.S. troops killing Afghan civilians
BEIRUT: Thousands of people converged Saturday on central Beirut to mark the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Lebanese former premier Rafiq Hariri.Waving Lebanese flags and carrying pictures of the slain leader, men, women and children gathered under sunny skies in Martyr's Square where members of the parliamentary majority were to address the crowd. The rally comes as final preparations are underway in The Hague for the launch of the international tribunal set up to bring Hariri's killers to justice. It also comes as the country prepares for legislative elections in June that will pit Western-backed political parties against a Hezbollah-led alliance backed by Syria and Iran.Hariri died in a massive car bombing on February 14, 2005 that also killed 22 others. The assassination was widely blamed on then Lebanese power-broker Syria, which has denied any involvement. The attack on the Beirut seafront was one of the worst acts of political violence to rock Lebanon since t...
Comments