WORLD
KABUL — Afghan presidential challenger Abdullah Abdullah plans to boycott next week's runoff against incumbent Hamid Karzai following a breakdown in talks on how to fix the country's electoral crisis, two people familiar with the discussions said.
A boycott would severely undermine a vote intended to affirm the Afghan government's credibility. However, an Abdullah spokesman said no final decision had been made on the candidate's pullout and that Abdullah will announce his decision Sunday morning. It was possible word of the boycott was a negotiating tactic by the Abdullah camp.
The political stalemate in Kabul comes as President Barack Obama has been meeting with his advisers to try to determine U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, including troop levels. A weakened Afghan government will make it harder for Obama to get public support for his efforts.
Abdullah, who was once Karzai's foreign minister, put forward several conditions this week to avoid a repeat of the massive fraud of the August presidential election, including the replacement of the top election official and the suspension of several ministers.
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is making a new push to get Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table, holding talks Saturday in this Persian Gulf city with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and later in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Clinton was to make a personal plea for the two sides to resume peace talks even as U.S. officials acknowledged they saw little prospect for an immediate breakthrough.Over the course of the summer, President Barack Obama had hoped for a fast track to renewed peace negotiations, but Clinton reported to him Oct. 22 neither side had taken sufficient steps toward resuming the dialogue.Clinton arrived in Abu Dhabi in the early hours Saturday after completing a three-day visit to Pakistan.Obama held a three-way meeting with Netanyahu and Abbas in New York in September, hoping it would prod them to relaunch talks that broke off more than a year ago. But in her report to the president in October, Clinton indicated while the Palestinians had strengthened security efforts and reforms of Palestinian institutions, more needed to be done to prevent terror and to stop those who carry out or encourage attacks on Israel.
ISLAMABAD — Suspected Taliban militants set off a roadside bomb that killed seven paramilitary soldiers Saturday in a rugged tribal region of northwestern Pakistan, while government jets pounded Taliban hideouts elsewhere and killed at least 15 fighters, officials said.Pakistan's prime minister said the government, which is in the midst of an anti-Taliban offensive, has no choice but to wipe out the militants."We are at war," Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said during a news conference in the city of Peshawar, where a militant car bombing earlier this week killed more than 115 people.
TEHRAN, Iran — Senior Iranian lawmakers rejected Saturday a U.N.-backed plan to ship much of the country's uranium abroad for further enrichment, raising further doubts about the likelihood Tehran will finally approve the deal.The UN-brokered plan requires Iran to send 1.2 tons of low-enriched uranium — around 70 percent of its stockpile — to Russia in one batch by the end of the year, easing concerns the material would be used for a bomb.After further enrichment in Russia, France would convert the uranium into fuel rods that would be returned to Iran for use in a reactor in Tehran that produces medical isotopes.Iran has indicated it might agree to send only "part" of its stockpile in several shipments. Should the talks fail to help Iran obtain the fuel from abroad, Iran has threatened to enrich uranium to the higher level needed to power the research reactor itself domestically.
