Clinton seeks more European help in Afghanistan

ASTANA, Kazakhstan (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called on a European security organization Wednesday to play a bigger role in helping stabilize Afghanistan and to do more to strengthen the voice of human rights groups worldwide.

In the aftermath of the leak of huge numbers of sensitive U.S. diplomatic cables by the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy website, Clinton also urged a greater commitment to press freedom, but she made no overt reference to the embarrassing episode.

“It is not enough for a constitution to guarantee freedom of the press if, in reality, journalists are put under intense pressure and even assaulted,” she told the opening session of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s first summit meeting in 11 years.

She made no explicit mention of WikiLeaks, nor did it come up in other officials’ speeches on the first day of the summit.

On the sidelines of the summit, Clinton and her Belarussian counterpart, Sergei Martynov, announced that the former Soviet republic of Belarus will give up its stockpile of material used to make nuclear weapons by 2012.

That’s a significant step forward in efforts aimed at keeping nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists, and follows similar commitments made by other former Soviet republics, including Kazakhstan. Washington will provide technical and financial help to enable Belarus to dispose of its highly enriched uranium stocks.

On Afghanistan, Clinton said the OSCE can play an important role to improve border security, counter illicit trafficking, boost legitimate trade, promote economic development and help develop national institutions.

She urged a recommitment to what she called “comprehensive security” — not just protection against armed attack but also protection of democracy, human rights and fundamental freedoms.

The summit is being held over two days in Astana, the gleaming new Kazakh capital rising from the sparsely populated northern steppes.

The OSCE was born in the 1970s to nurture rapprochement between Cold War enemies. But the organization has in recent years struggled to define a clear purpose — an anxiety reflected in the speeches of many leaders at the Astana summit.

In the opening address, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon lamented shortcomings among the group’s members in enforcing the rule of law and protecting the rights of minorities.

“The OSCE unfortunately sometimes sees violations of its commitments in its own area,” he told delegates.

Those words will have been uncomfortable fare for summit host nation Kazakhstan, whose government has been subjected to frequent OSCE admonitions for failing to live up to commitments on improving media freedoms and democratic standards.

European Union President Herman Van Rompuy enjoined the OSCE to energize its role as a mediating influence in times of conflict.

“The OSCE’s capability in early warning … as well as in crisis management and post-conflict rehabilitation needs to be strengthened,” Van Rompuy said.

Failure to achieve any breakthrough in Europe’s various territorial stalemates, from Moldova’s separatist Trans-Dniester region to the perennial tension between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region, has served as an embarrassing reminder of the OSCE’s weakness to effect significant change.

“By the very use of words like ‘unresolved’ or ‘protracted,’ we risk putting these conflicts into a special category, beyond hope as it were,” Van Rompuy said.

Meanwhile, in a thinly veiled broadside at Russia, Clinton chided efforts to obstruct the placement of an OSCE mission in Georgia, whose own territorial integrity has been undermined by Moscow’s diplomatic and financial support for the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

“It is regrettable that a participating state has proposed to host a mission, and the OSCE has not been allowed to respond,” Clinton said.

Russia fought a brief but intense war with Georgia over South Ossetia in 2008.

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Barack Obama does a right-turn on Afghanistan

The media have it wrong. According to them, the big news out of the NATO summit in Lisbon, Portugal, is the 2014 withdrawal date from Afghanistan.

In truth, the big news out of Lisbon is that Obama and NATO have abandoned any definitive timeline for military operations in Afghanistan. America and NATO, it seems, are going to stay there until the mission is complete and a sovereign, stable and self-sufficient Afghan state is assured.

To be sure, the “goal” or “target date” for ending offensive allied combat operations in Afghanistan is 2014. But as Obama himself acknowledged today in Lisbon, that may or may not happen, depending upon conditions on the ground. And so, “I’ll make that determination when I get there,” the president said in today’s press conference.

In any case, he added: American troops will remain in Iraq and Afghanistan for many years to come in order to conduct counterterrorism operations.

This is a big concession and thus big news. It marks a genuine right-turn on Afghanistan. I mean Obama’s newfound commitment to winning and to completing the mission there, his abandonment of hard and fixed deadlines, and his acknowledgement that America will maintain a long-term military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan for many years to come.

Here are Obama’s exact words, in context, after CBS News’ Bill Plante asked him whether he (Obama) would “keep U.S. troops committed [in Afghanistan] in a combat role [after 2014] if necessary.”

The other thing that I’m pretty confident we will still be doing after 2014 is maintaining a counterterrorism capability until we have confidence that al-Qaeda is no longer operative — and is no longer a threat to the American homeland and to American allies and personnel around the world.

And so, it’s going to be important for us to continue to have platforms to be able to execute those counterterrorism operations. And that’s true in Iraq as well. And obviously that’s even more true when it comes to core al-Qaeda.

You know, we don’t want, after having made these extraordinary efforts by so many countries — we don’t want to have to suddenly find ourselves in a situation where they [al-Qaeda] waited us out and they reconsolidated it [their military capabilities].

What accounts for Obama’s abrupt right-turn? I think it’s Gen. Petraeus and the performance of our troops on the ground. Media reports to the contrary notwithstanding, the surge in Afghanistan is shaping up to be as successful as the surge in Iraq. Obama recognizes this; and he knows that it would be unwise to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Ironically, then, Obama, who ran for office as an anti-war candidate, and whose base of support comes from the far-left anti-war fringe, may well win reelection as a successful war president.

We can thank Obama for not being reckless and for heeding the advice and counsel of his military advisers. But we can especially thank Gens. McChrystal and Petraeus: because they are the farsighted and visionary leaders who laid out the grand military strategy necessary to achieve victory in Afghanistan.

Petraeus especially seems to have saved two American presidents, Bush and Obama, from themselves — and not only from themselves, but also from their political advisers, from the media, and from the military and civil service bureaucracies. Petraeus and McChrystal deserve our thanks and our praise.

John R. Guardiano is a writer and analyst in Arlington, Virginia. He writes and blogs for a variety of publications, including FrumForum, the American Spectator and The Daily Caller. Follow him at his personal blog, ResoluteCon.com, and on Twitter @JohnRGuardiano.

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US official: US not committing to ending combat role in Afghanistan in 2014

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NATO: Bomber kills Afghanistan military bomb

Kabul (Afghanistan) (AP) - NATO said in a statement that a service member was killed by a bomb in the southern part of the Afghanistan.

The statement provided no details more.

Afghan and NATO forces aggressively expanded their presence in the South of the Afghanistan for months in an attempt to regain control of region of insurgents residents say pockets of control have been established but the fighting and the bombings are daily.

Many believe that the success of the operation depend not only on the securing of the region, but on the question of whether the Government is able to put in place for Governments and development in the region also.

Died Sunday is the number of members of the international forces killed this month-49.

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