While Afghan President Hamid Karzai has sought for years to entice lower-level members of the Taliban to leave the insurgency, this latest effort marks the first time the U.S. and NATO have gotten behind the push. Some 8,000 Taliban have flipped under the Afghan-led program, according to the Kabul government, although the program has been riddled with allegations of corruption. The revamped version relies on tribal leaders, instead of the Afghan central government, to choose development programs that employ former Taliban.
"That's the most cost-effective way of fighting a war, basicffxi gilally getting another guy to come in and say, 'O.K., I'm not fighting anymore,'" Republican Senator Jack Reed, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Vietnam-era Army officer, noted recently. "There are already indications on the ground that there are some parts of the Taliban who are willing, for the right arrangement, to come in."
Even though the Afghan war began 18 months before the Iraq invasion, such a program was not adopted incheap ffxi gil Afghanistan because the war effort there suffered as the U.S. poured most of its resources into Iraq. "We're not very far down that road [of enticing the Taliban not to fight]," Admiral Mike Mullen said in September as the Armed Services Committee weighed his nomination for a second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "It has not been an area of focus."
Taliban leaders have derided the effort. "The mujahedin of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan are not mercenaries and employed gunmen like the armed men of the invaders and their surffxi cheap gilrogates," Mullah Brader Akhund, the second-ranking Taliban, said after Obama signed legislation creating the program. "This war will come to an end when all invaders leave our country and an Islamic government based on the aspirations of our people is formed in the country."
But Army General David Petraeus, who now oversees the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq as chief of the U.S. Central Command, is a believer. He told Congress last year that his vaunted early 2007 surge of nearly 30,000 U.S. troops into Iraq only amplified Sunni eRunescape Moneyfforts to bring an uneasy peace to the bloodied country. The so-called "awakening" actually "started before the surge, but then was very much enabled by the surge," Petraeus said in April 2008. "It started with a sheik in Anbar province coming to a brigade commander in Ramadi and saying back in October 2006, 'Would you support us if we turned our weapons on al-Qaeda instead of on you?'" Such words from elements of the 70% of the Taliban that U.S. intelligence estimates are nonideological, U.S. officials say, could turn the country around.said it was seriously concerned by the proposal for a major expansion of Iran's atomic program. WashingtonRS2 Gold has condemned the plans as a "serious violation" of Tehran's obligations under U.N. security council resolutions.
Monday's comments by Larijani, an influential conservative politician, were a further sign of deteriorating relations between Iran and world powers seeking a diplomatic solution to a long-running row over Iran's nuclear program.
Last week the U.N. nuclear agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) rebuked Iran for building a uranium enrichment plant in secret."I believe that their moves are harming the NPT the mMaple Story Mesosost ... now whether you are a member of the NPT or pull out of it has no difference," Larijani told a news conference.
The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, said the decision to build the new enrichment plants was direct response to the IAEA condemnation.
"This decision was the result of the recent (IAEA) resolution, and Iran's government sent a strong message," said Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, quoted by state broadcaster IRIB.
WITHDRAWAL FROM NPT
Top Iranian officials have repeatedly said Tehran has no intention to leave the NPT, under which its Maple Story mesonuclear sites are subject to regular U.N. nuclear watchdog inspections, or seek nuclear weapons it says violate the tenets of Islam.
Strategic analysts also believe Iran would think twice before quitting the NPT since such a move would betray nuclear weapons ambitions and could provoke a pre-emptive attack by Israel and possibly the United States.
Salehi, said Tehran would not violate its international commitments, smaplestory Mesostate television reported.
But a hard-line newspaper editor, appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, asked in an editorial whether it was time for Tehran to withdraw from the treaty.
