Fourteen dead in Sri Lanka fighting: military

COLOMBO  ( 2008-04-02 13:37:22 ) : 

At least 13 Tamil Tiger rebels and one government soldier have been killed in fresh fighting in Sri Lanka's north, the defence ministry said on Wednesday.
Security forces said they captured a long string of rebel defence bunkers in the northwestern district of Mannar early Wednesday, with the fighting also leaving 40 guerrillas and 12 government soldiers wounded.
The latest casualty claims brings to at least 2,533 the number of rebels killed by security forces since January, according to defence ministry data.
The ministry has reported losing 152 of its soldiers in the same period.
Casualty figures given by both sides cannot be independently confirmed because Colombo bars journalists and rights groups from front-line areas.
The ministry also said its fighter jets bombed and inflicted "extensive damage" on a rebel base in Mullaittivu district in the northeast on Tuesday.
There was no immediate comment from the Liberation Tigers of Eelam (LTTE), who are fighting to carve out an independent homeland for minority Tamils in the ethnic Sinhalese-majority island's north and east.
The pro-rebel website Tamilnet.com, however, said the Tigers beat back an army offensive in Mannar on Tuesday, killing 15 soldiers and injuring 25 others. It did not give details of LTTE casualties.

US govt memo authorized extreme interrogation methods: report

WASHINGTON  ( 2008-04-02 14:08:50 ) : 

A newly declassified 2003 US Justice Department memo gave US military interrogators broad authority to use extreme methods in questioning al Qaeda detainees, US media said on Wednesday.
The memo -- sent to the Pentagon as it struggled to establish guidelines for its interrogators -- argued that the US president's wartime authority exempted them from US and international laws banning cruel treatment.
Withdrawn nine months after it was written, the document helped create the legal environment for the use of techniques such as simulated drowning and the abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, experts said.
"If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network," The Washington Post cited the memo as saying.
"In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions."
The 81-page memo was written at a time when the Pentagon was trying to come up with a list of approved interrogation methods for use on detainees at the US "war on terror" prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld had been forced in December 2002 to suspend a list of aggressive techniques, due to objections from senior military lawyers.
But, largely because of the memo, a Pentagon working group approved in April 2003 the continued use of "extremely ag

Kayani briefs PM on security, war against terrorism

ISLAMABAD  ( 2008-04-02 15:12:48 ) : 

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Wednesday chaired a high level briefing on security situation in the country and Pakistan's role in the global war against terrorism.
Chief of the Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvaiz Kayani and other senior security officials briefed the prime minister and leaders of coalition parties about the ground situation and how it was being tackled by the country's armed forces, an official source at the PM House told APP.
The meeting was attended co-chairman Pakistan Peoples Party Asif Ali Zardari, Minister for Defence Ch. Ahmed Mukhtar, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Interior Rehman Malik, PML-N leader Mohammad Nawaz Sharif, PML-N President Shahbaz Sharif, Asfandyar Wali of ANP and Maulana Fazalur Rehman of JUI-F.