Pakistan

When the White House sent a last-minute invitation for Asif Ali Zardari to attend the two-day NATO summit, they were taking a highly public gamble. Would sharing the spotlight with President Obama and other global leaders induce the Pakistani president to allow vital supplies to reach alliance troops fighting in Afghanistan? But long before the summit ended Monday, the answer was clear: No deal. Zardari's refusal to reopen the supply routes left a diplomatic blot on a summit that NATO sought to cast as the beginning of the end of the conflict in Afghanistan.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A Pakistani doctor who led a phony vaccination campaign aimed at helping the CIA pinpoint Osama bin Laden's whereabouts was convicted of treason Wednesday and sentenced to 33 years in prison, a decision that is likely to further fray Washington's fragile relations with Islamabad. U.S. officials have been seeking the release of Shakeel Afridi since his arrest by Pakistani authorities after the secret American commando raid that killed the Al Qaeda leader in his sprawling compound in the garrison city of Abbottabad a year ago. In January, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told CBS' "60 Minutes" that Afridi had provided intelligence that assisted the raid and criticized Pakistan's arrest of someone involved in helping track down the world's most wanted man. From the start, however, Pakistani authorities have regarded Afridi as a traitor and have ignored Washington's calls for his release.

It's a stultifying afternoon outside the Delhi District Court as Arun Yadav slides a sheet of paper into his decades-old Remington and revs up his daily 30-word-a-minute tap dance. Nearby, hundreds of other workers clatter away on manual typewriters amid a sea of broken chairs and wobbly tables as the occasional wildlife thumps on the leaky tin roof above. "Sometimes the monkeys steal the affidavits," Yadav said. "That can be a real nuisance. " The factories that make the machines may be going silent, but India's typewriter culture remains defiantly alive, fighting on bravely against that omnipresent upstart, the computer.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - As U.S. frustration with Pakistan's six-month blockade of Afghanistan-bound supplies became painfully apparent Monday at the NATO summit in Chicago, Pakistanis are growing worried that their government's negotiating strategy could cost their country millions of dollars in American aid and jeopardize its prospects for a voice in Afghanistan's postwar future. For weeks, U.S. and Pakistani officials have been negotiating a new set of transit fees that would pave the way for the reopening of routes that NATO convoys used to ferry fuel and nonlethal supplies from the southern port of Karachi to the Afghan border.

A government-appointed commission in Pakistan called Tuesday for the abolition of strict Islamic laws, which rights activists say discriminate against women. The Islamic Hudud Ordinances were passed in 1979 under the dictatorship of Gen. Zia ul-Haq and cover a range of crimes. One of the most controversial provisions states that a woman must have four male witnesses to prove rape or face a charge of adultery herself. Men and women found guilty of adultery face stoning or 100 lashes.

Nearly every day, former movie actor Erik Aude writes to his mother from his prison cell in Pakistan. He tells her about the beatings he has endured, the executions he has witnessed. He tells her about his boredom and despair, and the wasting away of his once-chiseled weightlifter's body. Sometimes, the 23-year-old muses about suicide. He tells her he is not a drug smuggler, despite the 3.6 kilos of opium found in his suitcase at the Islamabad airport.

Re "Pakistan Arrests Alleged Plotters," Oct. 19: We were surprised by this article that imputed ulterior political motives to Pakistan's arrest of a group of military officers suspected of conduct inimical to the state. The arrest of these officers is based on prima facie evidence that will be presented to a court of law after thorough investigation. Therefore, to view their arrest as an effort to curry favor with the Clinton Administration and to suggest that it was a deliberate political decision to influence Senate-House deliberations on the one-time waiver of the Pressler Amendment so that arms already paid for may be released to Pakistan is patently wrong.

Islamic militants who burn schools and threaten women in the name of religious purity. A righteous force battling corrupt and venal officials. Or gun-waving gangsters who conceal their crimes under a banner of spiritual renewal. Weeks of turmoil have made it appear as though a unified Taliban is on the march out of the wild northwest, staking out strategic ground for an assault on Pakistan's heartland. But who exactly the Taliban is may rest in the eye of the beholder.

Michele Bachmann called Rick Perry "highly naive" for saying he would cut off aid to Pakistan, part of a contentious round of questioning in tonight's GOP debate about U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Perry, the Texas governor, said that Pakistan had shown the world that "they can't be trusted. " "And until Pakistan clearly shows that they have America's best interests in mind, I would not send them one penny, period," he said. "I think it is important for us to send the message to those across the world that if you are not going to be an ally of the United States, do not expect a dime of our citizens' money.

A senior U.S. lawmaker said Thursday that unmanned CIA Predator aircraft operating in Pakistan are flown from an air base in that country, a revelation likely to embarrass the Pakistani government and complicate its counter-terrorism collaboration with the United States. The disclosure by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, marked the first time a U.S.

When the White House sent a last-minute invitation for Asif Ali Zardari to attend the two-day NATO summit, they were taking a highly public gamble. Would sharing the spotlight with President Obama and other global leaders induce the Pakistani president to allow vital supplies to reach alliance troops fighting in Afghanistan? But long before the summit ended Monday, the answer was clear: No deal. Zardari's refusal to reopen the supply routes left a diplomatic blot on a summit that NATO sought to cast as the beginning of the end of the conflict in Afghanistan.

As the World Health Assembly convenes in Geneva this week, one item on the agenda will be polio, or more specifically, how to finally deliver on an epic promise made a quarter-century ago: to liberate humankind from one of the world's most deadly and debilitating diseases. The world's war on polio has been as ambitious an undertaking as the successful campaign to eradicate another great public health menace, smallpox. Slowly but surely we have advanced on that goal. Polio, a highly preventable disease, today survives in only three countries: Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan.

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan - Icy wind whipped Lt. Nauman Ahmed's face as he plodded up a barren expanse of snowfields and crevasses. Woozy and spent, he reached a Pakistani military outpost 20,000 feet above sea level and slumped down on a cot in one of the camp's fiberglass igloos. The next morning, the peril of waging war in the world's highest conflict zone began to take its toll. His head throbbed, and he was coughing up blood. When he tried to speak, he couldn't form words. "I thought to myself, 'What is happening to me?

CHICAGO - As thousands of protesters marched in the streets, President Obama welcomed more than 60 world leaders to his heavily guarded hometown for a NATO summit that will start the clock for America and its allies to begin pulling combat troops from Afghanistan. The two-day summit, the largest in the 63-year history of the military alliance, came as White House officials made it clear they were furious overPakistan's continued refusal to reopen ground routes used to move fuel and other war supplies into Afghanistan, a six-month standoff that the White House had hoped to resolve before Obama arrived in Chicago.

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta heads to this weekend's NATO summit prepared to confront Pakistan over what he considers price-gouging for transport of supplies to Afghanistan and hoping for a "consensus" among allies over the war effort. In an interview before his arrival in Chicago, where the summit is scheduled to begin Sunday, Panetta all but ruled out paying Pakistan $5,000 for each truck carrying supplies across its territory for NATO troops waging the Afghanistan war. Pakistani officials have demanded that amount as a condition for reopening supply routes that have been closed to the alliance since fall.

NEW DELHI — Hopes were high after Congress passed a U.S.-India civilian nuclear agreement in 2008 that the two countries would forge a close military and strategic partnership. But Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's three-day trip to India, starting Sunday after a weekend stop in Bangladesh, comes amid reduced expectations and political distraction on both sides and a relationship increasingly marked by incremental movement on a variety of issues. Though India remains an important ally, few big-ticket nuclear and defense deals that the United States had hoped for have materialized.

Stepping up pressure on Pakistan to help thwart further terrorist attacks on India, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Wednesday that the Indian government probably would not show the same level of restraint that it did in 2008 if struck again. Gates said at a news conference that Al Qaeda and other Islamic militant organizations are hoping to ignite a regional clash between Pakistan and India, a confrontation he said must be averted. Gates has praised India's "statesmanship" in the wake of the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack, which left at least 166 people dead and has been attributed to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani-based extremist group aligned with Al Qaeda.

NEW YORK -- Mitt Romney on Tuesday marked Osama bin Laden's death a year ago by alternately praising President Obama for ordering the targeted killing of the terrorist leader and slamming him for politicizing the moment. “I think it's totally appropriate for the president to express to the American people the view that he has that he had an important role in taking out Osama bin Laden. I think politicizing it and trying to draw a distinction between himself and myself was an inappropriate use of a very important event that brought Americans together, which was the elimination of Osama bin Laden,” Romney told reporters after bringing six pizzas to a fire station that lost 11 men in the Sept.

WASHINGTON — Osama bin Laden was devising a strategy for overthrowing Afghan President Hamid Karzai and controlling Afghanistan once the U.S. left the country, said a former U.S. official familiar with the cache of notes and letters that were seized last year in the raid on the terrorist leader's compound. Bin Laden had discussed his plans with the Taliban leadership council, known as the Quetta Shura, and the Haqqani network, which controls the North Waziristan tribal area in Pakistan, said the former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity while discussing the intelligence.