Pakistan on Wednesday gave mixed signals over the US role in the fight against militants, calling for closer cooperation between the two nations but branding US missile strikes ‘counterproductive.’
   Dozens of missile strikes since August have sparked sustained and angry government criticism of the United States, a close ally believed to be firing the missiles from unmanned CIA aircraft.
   The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, told the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday the United States would ‘go after al-Qaeda wherever al-Qaeda is,’ adding that the US position had been relayed to Pakistan.
   In response to Gates’s comments, foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Sadiq said Wednesday: ‘Our policy remains unchanged and we believe drone strikes are counterproductive.’
   Sadiq said attacks from unmanned surveillance planes were ‘counterproductive to our efforts to counter terrorism,’ declining any further comment.
   But hours later he announced that Pakistan sought closer cooperation with the United States in the so-called ‘war on terror,’ despite insisting ‘there is no understanding between Pakistan and the United States on predator attacks.’
   ‘We want closer cooperation at the operational level to deal with militancy,’ he said in a written statement.
   In an editorial published in the Washington Post on Wednesday, the Pakistan president, Asif Ali Zardari, urged the United States to increase military and social aid to cash-strapped Pakistan.
   US and Afghan officials have accused Pakistan of not doing enough to crack down on militants, who cross into Afghanistan to attack US and NATO troops battling a Taliban insurgency.
   Sadiq said Pakistan has done more than any other country to tackle militants.
   Two missile strikes in South and North Waziristan, near the Afghanistan border, last Friday were the first such attacks since the US president, Barack Obama, took office last week.
   Pakistani security officials said at least 21 people were killed.
   The strikes effectively dashed any hopes Pakistani officials were nurturing that the new Obama administration would halt such actions.
   But Sadiq said Wednesday: ‘We look forward to working closely with the new US administration on all issues, including in the fight against terrorism.’
   Pakistan has repeatedly protested to Washington that drone strikes violate its territorial sovereignty and deepen resentment among the 160 million people of the nuclear-armed Islamic nation.

The Taliban welcomed president Barack Obama’s order to close Guantanamo but said peace would only come if he reverses the ‘satanic policies’ of his predecessor, George W Bush.
   In a message posted on online jihadist forums, the Taliban also called on Obama to close all ‘evil’ US detention centres for militants, ‘completely withdraw’ from Iraq and Afghanistan and ‘stop defending Israel.’
   ‘Obama’s move to close Guantanamo detention centre is a positive step for peace and stability in the region and the world,’ said the message, a copy of which was obtained from the US-based monitor, the SITE Intelligence Group.
   The message also mentioned Obama’s appointment of ‘peace envoys:’ Richard Holbrooke as envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and George Mitchell as Middle East envoy.
   Obama signed executive orders in his first week in office to ban torture, shut secret overseas CIA detention centres and close the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where some 245 detainees are still held.
   The Guantanamo prison camp was established in 2002 as a means to hold detainees beyond the reach of US courts. The US also holds approximately 600 detainees at the US air base in Bagram, Afghanistan, the fate of which Obama has not yet decreed.
   ‘If Barack Obama sincerely wants real stability and peace in the world, he should not only close Guantanamo. Rather, he should void all those evil projects established in the light of Bush’s satanic perspective of instability in the world,’ the Taliban message said.
   Monday, Obama told the Muslim world that ‘Americans are not your enemy’ in his first formal interview as president.
   ‘We are going to follow through on many of my commitments to do a more effective job of reaching out, listening as well as speaking to the Muslim world,’ he said in the interview with Al-Arabiya, a pan-Arab and Saudi-owned satellite television network.
   ‘If Obama is right and, according to his words, wants to open a new page based on peaceful interaction built on mutual respect with the Islamic world, the first thing he has to do is to stop and annul all these (Middle East policy) procedures, which were created according to Bush’s criminal policy,’ the Taliban message said.

US peace envoy George Mitchell arrived in Israel on Wednesday saying it was critical to consolidate the Gaza ceasefire, as tensions in the enclave rose after a deadly raid by Palestinian militants.
   Mitchell held meetings with Israeli leaders after flying in from Egypt on the second leg of his maiden trip to the region, instructed by the president, Barack Obama, to ‘engage vigorously’ to resuscitate the lifeless Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
   ‘It is of critical importance that the ceasefire be extended and consolidated. We support Egypt’s continuing efforts in that regard,’ he said after meeting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
   He thanked Egypt for its efforts to turn into a lasting truce separate ceasefires declared by Israel and Hamas on January 18 after a devastating war in
   Gaza and said Washington was ‘committed to vigorously pursuing lasting peace and stability in the region.’
   ‘The decision by president Obama to dispatch me to come to this region less than one week after his inauguration is clear and tangible evidence of this commitment,’ Mitchell said.
   His arrival in the region came amid the deadliest flare-up of violence since the January 18 end of Israel’s blistering 22-day war on the Islamists’ Gaza stronghold.
   Palestinian militants killed an Israeli soldier near the border on Tuesday and Israel retaliated with gunfire that left one man dead, an air strike that wounded three and bombing raids over border smuggling tunnels.
   On Wednesday, Hamas said it fired mortars at an Israeli force that was carrying out a limited incursion in central Gaza. The army had no immediate comment.
   Senior Israeli officials, campaigning for the February 10 parliamentary election that the right-wing opposition is widely expected to win, vowed that the Jewish state would hit back hard for the attack.
   ‘The army’s reaction today was only operational. This was not the response to the killing of a soldier... Israel’s response shall come,’ a senior government official quoted Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as saying.
   Government spokesman Mark Regev said: ‘In the face of such violent provocation, Israel will act to protect itself.’
   Meanwhile, the defence minister, Ehud Barak, cancelled his planned departure to the United States on Wednesday because of the violence, a ministry official said.

New US president Barack Obama must view Iran as a strategic player if he wishes to achieve regional peace rather than limiting his policy to Tehran’s controversial nuclear drive, analysts said on Wednesday.
   Both Washington and Tehran have an interest in the wider Middle East and an easing of tensions between the two archfoes is key to ushering in peace in the volatile region, they said.
   Mohammad Saleh Sedghian, head of Tehran-based think tank the Arab-Iranian Studies Centre, said both administrations were watching each other closely to determine their next steps.
   ‘The Iranians are watching the Americans’ practical moves and the Americans, especially Obama, are expecting Iran to help them take the correct position on Tehran’s nuclear plan and Iran’s role concerning Hezbollah and Hamas,’ he said, referring to militant groups in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.
   Officials in Washington accuse Tehran of arming and funding the two Islamist movements as well as Shia fighters in Iraq where US forces are battling sectarian strife and a raging insurgency.
   Tehran denies the charges but acknowledges offering moral support to Hezbollah and financial aid to the Hamas government in Gaza.
   But on Monday Obama, in contrast to his predecessor George W Bush who refused talks with Iran until it halted sensitive nuclear work, extended a diplomatic hand towards Tehran.
   ‘As I said in my inauguration speech, if countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us,’ Obama said in an interview with pan-Arabic television Al-Arabiya.
   ‘It is very important for us to make sure that we are using all the tools of US power, including diplomacy, in our relationship with Iran.’
   On Wednesday the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said he would welcome Obama’s plan if it contained ‘real change’ but he also demanded an apology for past US ‘crimes’ against Iran.
   Obama’s policies towards Iran are expected to be guided by Tehran’s own approach to its nuclear programme, which many Western nations suspect is a cover for ambitions to build the atomic bomb.
   Washington’s ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, on Monday pledged ‘direct’ support to Tehran if it halts uranium enrichment, the process which makes fuel for nuclear plants but can be extended to make the core of an atomic bomb.
   The five permanent members of the UN Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — plus Germany (known as the P5-plus-1) have offered Tehran economic and energy incentives in exchange for freezing enrichment.

Polling stations were open across Iraq on Wednesday amid tight security for the first stage of a landmark provincial election, the nation’s first ballot since 2005.
   The advance voting started ahead of Saturday’s main polling day to try to avoid the security, logistical and electoral fraud problems during the parliamentary election of 2005 when the vote was held on single day.
   About 614,000 police, soldiers, hospital patients and prisoners were eligible to cast ballots at 1,699 voting centres that opened at 7:00am (0400 GMT) and will close at 5:00pm (1500 GMT).
   ‘Participation has been excellent,’ Qassim Abudi, administrative director of the Iraq High Electoral Commission, told a press briefing in Baghdad, adding that some polling stations had closed by midday.

Taliban militants blew up a boys’ school and the houses of six pro-government tribal elders in troubled northwest Pakistan near the Afghan border, a local official said Wednesday.
   The incidents took place late Tuesday in the tribal region of Bajaur, where government troops have been engaged in fierce fighting with extremist rebels since launching an operation last August.
   ‘A government-run boys’ school and houses of six pro-government elders were blown up in different parts of Bajaur,’ local administration official Mohammad Jamil Khan said.
   There were no reports of casualties. None of the six tribal elders were at home during the attacks. They were all members of a lashkar or local force that was set up in the Mamoun area of Bajaur to counter the Taliban, Khan said.
   Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt has become a stronghold for hundreds of extremists who fled Afghanistan after the US-led invasion toppled the hardline Taliban regime in late 2001.
   Pakistan has been accused by the United States and Afghanistan of not doing enough to stop militants crossing the border to attack US and NATO troops in Afghanistan.
   Islamabad says the ongoing Bajaur offensive is proof of its commitment to crushing insurgents.

The Zimbabwean MDC opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai has said he agreed to form a unity government, after his party rejected a deal reached at a regional summit, a South African newspaper reported Wednesday.
   The contradiction suggested differences had emerged within his party over implementation of a September power-sharing pact that could add to uncertainty over whether a new Zimbabwean leadership would be united enough to tackle an economic crisis.
   Regional leaders decided at the meeting Tuesday that Zimbabwe should form a unity government next month but the MDC issued a statement saying it was disappointed with the outcome, raising doubts over chances of ending the political deadlock.

The Madagascar president, Marc Ravalomanana, accused his main rival on Wednesday of stoking political unrest in the capital that has claimed at least 34 lives.
   Anti-government demonstrations called by mayor Andry Rajoelina turned violent on Monday as mobs looted and set fire to the state radio building and ransacked Ravalomanana’s private TV station.
   The 34-year-old mayor, who portrays Ravalomanana as a dictator, had announced a temporary suspension of his protest campaign but his deputy said demonstrations were to resume on Wednesday.
   Hundreds of his supporters gathered at a city park where Rajoelina held a huge weekend rally and called for a general strike.
   ‘We are going to resume the protests. We are waiting for the mayor to come at the Place du 13 mai,’ Andriamahazo Nirhy-Lanto said. ‘We stopped yesterday to honour those who died in the demonstrations as well as to ensure that there is order.’
   Firefighters found 25 charred bodies on Tuesday in the rubble of a shopping centre ravaged by fire. Six more bodies were discovered at a warehouse owned by Ravalomanana. Two protesters and a prisoner completed the toll.
   Ravalomanana, himself a former Antananarivo mayor, laid the blame squarely at the feet of Rajoelina.
   ‘It was him, the leader, the initiator of these disturbances,’ Ravalomanana said as he visited the state radio building.

Prolific Pulitzer Prize-winning US novelist John Updike, who chronicled sex, love and religion in small-town America, died Tuesday at 76, his publisher Knopf said.
   ‘It is with great sadness that I report that John Updike died this morning at the age of 76, after a battle with lung cancer,’ Knopf publicity director Nicholas Latimer said in a statement.
   Over a career spanning more than half a century, the poetic, but accessible writer published at least a dozen short story collections and 25 novels, notably the Rabbit series. He also wrote hundreds of short stories, poetry, literary criticism and reviews in The New Yorker magazine.
   ‘He was one of our greatest writers and he will be sorely missed,’ Latimer said.

A former child soldier testified at a war crimes trial here Wednesday how he was recruited into a militia led by former DR Congo warlord Thomas Lubanga as he was going home from school.
   ‘I was very young and so I cannot remember the date,’ the boy told the judges of the International Criminal Court where Lubanga is on trial for recruiting hundreds of children to fight in DR Congo’s civil war.
   ‘Certain school pupils were recruited and taken away. I was one of those taken to the camps. It happened when we were returning home ... I was leaving school.’
   The boy gave evidence from behind a screen to protect him from public view, although Lubanga, as well as the judge, prosecutors and defence lawyers can see him.
   His voice and face have been electronically distorted on screens in the public gallery and his name
   withheld for his own protection.
   The boy is the first witness to testify in Lubanga’s trial, the first ever before the ICC.
   Prosecutors said at Monday’s opening of the trial that Lubanga’s militia had been ‘an army of children’.
   The 48-year-old militiaman is accused of recruiting hundreds of children under the age of 15 to fight for his Union of Congolese Patriots during the five-year civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which ended in 2003.