Wednesday, November 25, 2009 WASHINGTON-While President Barack Obama held talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Kashmiris and Sikhs gathered in front of the White House on Tuesday to protest New Delhi’s repression in the Indian-occupied Kashmir and Punjab.Hundreds of Kashmiri men, women and children living in Washington metro area staged a peace rally to press their demands for a resolution of the decades-old Kashmir dispute. The participants carried anti-India placards reminding the world of the urgency to help resolve the Kashmir conflict.They urged President Obama to persuade New Delhi towards resolution of the lingering Jammu and Kashmir dispute and fulfil his 2008 election campaign pledge.The participants urged an end to human rights abuses in the heavily militarised Indian Held Kashmir.Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai, Exective Director of the Kashmiri-American Council, emphasised that the Kashmir dispute remains key to long-term stability in South Asia. He pointed out that this fact about the centrality of Kashmir resolution to South Asian peace has been recognised by all fair-minded and objective international security and political affairs experts.‘Kashmir is one of the oldest disputes recognised by the UN but the Indian leaders don’t want the US President to talk about it — and our peace rally is meant to draw attention to the urgent need for efforts toward a fair settlement’, Dr Fai added. ‘Kashmir is recognised by the UN as a disputed territory whose status is yet to be determined by its people’, he said.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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