Pakistan plans to release all Afghan Taliban prisoners still in its detention, including the group's former second-in-command, an official said on Friday, in the clearest signal yet that it backs reconciliation efforts. Regional power Pakistan is seen as critical to the success of U.S. and Afghan efforts to bring stability to Afghanistan, a task gaining urgency as the end of the U.S. combat mission in 2014 draws closer.
A U.S. Marine accused of urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters and then posing for photographs, a scene captured in a widely circulated video on the Internet, is due to be tried by court martial on Wednesday at a North Carolina military base. Staff Sergeant Edward W. Deptola is among a group of Marines to face disciplinary action after the video, posted on YouTube and other websites in January 2012, showed four U.S.
The Pakistani army on Wednesday protested to India over the killing of one of its soldiers in Kashmir, the fifth fatality this year in heightened hostilities that have raised concerns about ceasefire violations between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Tuesday there could be no "business as usual" with Pakistan after a clash last week along the line dividing the arch-rivals in Kashmir in which two Indian soldiers were killed and their bodies mutilated. Speaking to reporters at a ceremony to mark India's Army Day, Singh said that the killings on January 8 on the Line of Control, in which one of the soldiers was beheaded, were a "barbaric act".
India's army chief threatened to retaliate against Pakistan for the killing of two soldiers in fighting near the border of the disputed region of Kashmir, saying he had asked his commanders there to be aggressive in the face of provocation. General Bikram Singh's remarks come amid mounting public anger in India after Delhi accused Pakistani soldiers of slitting the throat of one of the soldiers and decapitating him.
Sri Lanka recalled its envoy to Saudi Arabia after the execution of a Sri Lankan housemaid over the death of an infant in her care in 2005, the government said on Thursday. Rizana Nafeek was beheaded in the town of Dawadmy, near the capital Riyadh, on Wednesday morning after being sentenced to death in 2007. She was accused by her Saudi employer of killing his infant daughter while she was bottle-feeding.
Hafez Saeed, the Pakistani Islamist leader accused of masterminding the 2008 Mumbai massacre, said India was trying to destabilise Pakistan and predicted violence in the disputed region of Kashmir could get "ugly". "We do not want any force to be used or any military operation for this. But the Indians are opting for the other alternative," Hafez Saeed told Reuters in a telephone interview on Friday.
