UNITED STATES LAWMAKERS FREEZE $700 MILLION TO PAKISTAN

WASHINGTON: The leaders of a US House-Senate negotiating panel said on Monday they had agreed to freeze $700 million in US aid to Pakistan until it provides some assurances of assistance in the fight against improvised explosive devices in the region.

The explosive devices are among militants’ most effective weapons against US and coalition troops in Afghanistan. Many are made using ammonium nitrate, a common fertilizer shipped across the border from Pakistan. The freeze on US aid was agreed as part of a defence bill that is expected to be passed this week. The United States wants “assurances that Pakistan is countering improvised explosive devices in their country that are targeting our coalition forces,” Representative Howard McKeon, a House Republican, told reporters.

The United States has allocated some $20 billion in security and economic aid to Pakistan since 2001, much of it in the form of reimbursements for assistance in fighting militants. But US lawmakers have expressed increasing frustration with Pakistan’s efforts in the war. There have been numerous proposals to make US aid to Pakistan conditional on more cooperation in fighting militants such as the Haqqani network Washington believes operate out of Pakistan and battle US troops in Afghanistan.

US lawmakers allege that many Afghan bombs are made with fertilizer smuggled by militants across the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan. “The vast majority of the material used to make improvised explosive devices used against US forces in Afghanistan originates from two fertilizer factories inside Pakistan,” Senator John McCain, a Republican, said in the Senate last week. The provision freezing $700 million in aid to Pakistan was agreed upon by leaders of the armed services committees from both parties in the House and Senate, including McCain. It is part of compromise legislation authorising US defence programs expected to be approved this week, McKeon said. He said the bill would also require the Pentagon to deliver a strategy for improving the effectiveness of US aid to Pakistan.

SECRET MEMO JUSTIFIED KILLING OF US-BORN AWLAQI

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama’s administration crafted a legal document in secret ahead of the assassination of US-born Al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaqi, which permitted the killing of an American citizen without trial, a report said Saturday.

The secret memorandum was written in 2010 to justify the action despite a legal framework that prevents the White House ordering assassinations, the US federal law against murder, and protections for US citizens contained in the Bill of Rights, said the New York Times, citing sources familiar with the memo. The 50-page document, completed in June last year, said the killing could only be lawful if it was not feasible for him to be captured alive. Awlaqi was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in late September, in a raid hailed by Obama as a “major blow” to the Al-Qaeda network.

The killing did not only have to be justified over US laws, but also certain areas of the international laws of war. The memo, however, according to the Times, was crafted specifically for Awlaqi, so does not set a precedent for killing any American that authorities suspect of posing a terrorist threat.

The legal memo alleged Awlaqi was involved in the war between Al-Qaeda and the United States, and that he was in particular a significant threat though the document, said the Times, did not itself assess the evidence against him. The White House had previously declined to answer the tough questions surrounding the killing, as rights groups and legal observers raised eyebrows over the rights of New Mexico-born Awlaqi as an American citizen.

Civil rights groups cried foul with some arguing it would be illegal for the US military to kill an American citizen on the battlefield, following no attempt to indict him. US intelligence officials believed Awlaqi was linked to a US army major charged with shooting dead 13 people in Fort Hood, Texas, and to a Nigerian student accused of trying to blow up a US airliner on December 25, 2009.

He was also believed to be the leader of external operations of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen and had taken the lead in planning and directing efforts to murder innocent Americans. The legal document was crafted with the involvement of all top departments in the Obama administration, the Times said, including White House liaising with legal counsels at the Pentagon, State Department, and National Security Council, along with other US intelligence agencies.

NATO INVESTIGATES DEADLY AFGHAN HELICOPTER CRASH

Rocket-propelled grenade, although the militant group often exaggerates incidents involving foreign troops or Afghan government targets. In Washington, a US official said the helicopter was believed to have been shot down. The Pentagon and the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan said overnight the cause of the crash was being investigated.

The crash and its high death toll occurred two weeks after foreign forces started a security handover to Afghan troops and police – to be completed by the end of 2014 – and at a time of growing unease about the increasingly unpopular and costly war. The Chinook crashed in central Maidan Wardak province, just west of the country’s capital Kabul, on Friday night.

“No words describe the sorrow we feel in the wake of this tragic loss,” General John Allen, who took over from General David Petraeus three weeks ago as ISAF commander, said in a statement released overnight. “All of those killed in this operation were true heroes who had already given so much in the defense of freedom.”

A US official said some of the dead Americans were members of the Navy’s special forces SEAL Team 6 – the unit that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May in Pakistan, but that none of the dead had been part of the bin Laden raid. The crash was the deadliest single incident for US troops in Afghanistan, ISAF said.

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in a statement on Saturday that the United States would “stay the course” to complete the mission in Afghanistan, a sentiment echoed by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The crash will likely raise more questions about the security transition and how much longer troops should stay. All foreign combat troops are due to leave by the end of 2014, but some US lawmakers question whether that is fast enough.

US and other Nato commanders have claimed success in reversing a growing insurgency in the Taliban’s southern heartland, although insurgents have demonstrated an ability to adapt their tactics and mount attacks in other areas. But violence is at its worst in Afghanistan since US-backed Afghan forces toppled the Taliban government in late 2001, with high levels of foreign troop deaths, and record civilian casualties during the first six months of 2011.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai “shared his deep sorrow and sadness” with his US counterpart, Barack Obama, and the families of the victims, his palace said on Saturday. Last year was the deadliest of the war for foreign troops in Afghanistan with 711 killed.

The crash in Maidan Wardak means at least 375 foreign troops have been killed so far in 2011. More than two-thirds were American, according to independent monitor www.icasualties.com and figures kept by Reuters.