Wars in the World

Nato says its forces in Afghanistan have killed at least 19 Taliban fighters who tried to storm a combat outpost under cover of darkness.

The attack happened at a base in Paktika province, bordering Pakistan.

The militants are reported to have attacked from all directions, using rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

Meanwhile, President Hamid Karzai has criticised the first joint operation by Russian and US agents to destroy drug laboratories in Afghanistan.

Mr Karzai said Thursday’s raid had taken place without his government’s permission and was a clear violation of Afghan sovereignty.

A Russian official said about 70 military personnel and counter-narcotics agents were involved, and that they had destroyed a “major hub” about 5km (three miles) from the Pakistani border, near Jalalabad.

The News:
http://www.bbc.co.uk … -south-asia-11657981

Armenia and Azerbaijan can come to an agreement on the principles of Nagorno-Karabakh issue settlement before the OSCE summit scheduled for December, reported Russian President Dmitri Medvedev who was the mediator of the October 27 meeting of the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

“The issue of the settlement principles is yet to be solved to later become the basis of the peace treaty. Nevertheless, we have come a long way which gives a good ground for hope that if the sides work efficiently during this month, basic principles of settlement could be reconciled before the OSCE summit in Kazakhstan on December 1-2,” says Medvedev.

The main practical and political outcome of the Astrakhan meeting has become the agreement between the two presidents to exchange war prisoners.

“The parties have agreed on a joint statement, which is of humanitarian character but is a very important one. It is a special declaration providing for immediate exchange of war prisoners and bodies of those who died [in recent skirmishes on the line of contact] as confidence-building measures,” said Medvedev.

The News:
http://www.armeniano … nt_meeting_astrakhan

The militant Somali Islamist group al-Shabaab paraded newly trained fighters in the capital, Mogadishu, on Thursday, the Somali radio station Shabelle reported.

“These forces are our reserve and they will break the enemy’s back,” said Sheikh Ali Mohamud Ali Dhere, a spokesman for al-Shabaab.

Top commanders of the group addressed the new fighters at the Maslah compound in northeast Mogadishu.

The spokesman said that the new unit is named after Sheikh Mustafa Abu Yazid, a member of al Qaeda killed in a suspected U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan this year.

The News:
http://edition.cnn.c … militants/index.html

Republic of Kiribati recognizes the Republic of Kosovo as an independent and sovereign state, informs the Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Kosovo.

“Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kiribati has notified the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kosovo through a verbal note that this country has decided to recognize the independence of the Republic of Kosovo on October 21, 2010.”

At the same time, the Republic of Kiribati has expressed readiness to enter the Republic of Kosovo diplomatic bilateral relations to develop friendly relations and cooperation between the two countries in political, trade and economic.

Kiribati, is an island nation located in the central tropical Pacific Ocean. Kiribati became independent from the United Kingdom in 1979.

The News:
http://www.newkosova … dence-of-Kosovo.html

Some of the Somali regions that share a border with Ethiopia have been in a state of turmoil over the past few days. In the shifting patterns of this prolonged war in Somalia, the escalation of violence in the regions of Galguduud, Hiiran, Gedo and Bakool has illuminated some of the underlying geo-political dynamics that are at play in the volatile region of the Horn of Africa.

More than 400 Transitional Federal Government (TFG) soldiers, accompanied by up to 300 Ethiopian forces, raided the town of Baladweyn, Hiiran, in order to bring an end to the Islamists’ rule in the region; in Galguduud, hundreds of Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama (ASWJ) rebels attacked Cadaado, the region’s business hub which is governed by a tribal administration, with military equipment and reinforcements readily supplied by the Ethiopian government; in the border towns of Yeed and Ceel Berde, Bakool region, the Islamists are fending off the Ethiopian troops’ aggressive incursions; in the South-Western region of Gedo, TFG troops buttressed by the Ethiopian might and men wrestled the region’s capital, Beledxaawo, from the iron grip of the Islamists.

But while the Transitional Federal Government has its own reasons for driving out the Islamists from the region, what are the motives that underpin the Ethiopian involvement?

The News:
http://somalilandpre … stop-islamists-18783