A unanimous Senate Armed Services Committee took a bipartisan shot at Pakistan on Thursday for the sentencing of the physician who helped catch Osama bin Laden, approving a $631.4 billion defense policy bill that withholds aid to the wavering ally until supply lines are open, support for terrorist networks ceases and the doctor, Shakil Afridi, is released.

The committee’s defense measure for the fiscal year that begins in October largely sticks to the budget caps agreed to last summer and is $4 billion below the version approved by the House on Friday. It leaves in place a delicate compromise on detainee policy from last year that some critics believe authorizes the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects apprehended on U.S. soil.

CHICAGO — President Obama and the leaders of America’s NATO allies on Monday agreed to end their guiding role in the decade-long war in Afghanistan next summer, saying it is time for the Afghan people to take responsibility for their own security and for the United States-led international troops to go home.

Declaring that “our forces broke the Taliban’s momentum,” Mr. Obama used the summit meeting of NATO leaders here in his adopted hometown to begin an exit from a conflict he embraced during his first campaign for president as America’s good war.

“We’re now unified behind a plan to responsibly wind down the war in Afghanistan,” Mr. Obama said during a news conference after the meeting. He called the decision a “major step” toward the end of the war.

But Mr. Obama acknowledged that “real challenges” remained in dealing with the problems across the border in Pakistan, and that the conference had not resolved the impasse over reopening supply lines or the other tensions about the fight against insurgents operating from safe havens there.

“We think that Pakistan has to be part of the solution in Afghanistan,” he said. “Neither country is going to have the kind of security, stability and prosperity that it needs unless they can resolve some of these outstanding issues.”

Pakistan closed supply lines to Afghanistan after an American airstrike in November that killed 24 Pakistani solders. Mr. Obama has refused to apologize for the strike, as Pakistan has demanded in negotiations with the Americans, and he pointedly exchanged only a few words with the country’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, during the two-day summit meeting — “very brief, as we were walking into the summit,” he said. The two men also stood and spoke briefly with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, before all three joined the other leaders for a group photograph.

The plans to withdraw from Afghanistan are “irreversible,” Mr. Obama and the world leaders said in their communiqué, a deliberate word choice that underscored the political reality in America and in Europe. After 10 years of war and with the global economy reeling, the nations of the West no longer want to pay, either in treasure or in lives, the costs of their efforts in a place that for centuries has resisted foreign attempts to tame it.

The United States on Thursday announced the imposition of antidumping tariffs of more than 31 percent on solar panels from China.

The move by the Commerce Department is certain to infuriate Chinese officials already upset after recent bilateral frictions over China’s human rights policies and its increasingly confrontational approach toward American allies like the Philippines and Japan.

The antidumping decision is among the biggest in American history, covering one of the largest and fastest-growing categories of imports from China, the world’s largest exporter.

The department said the United States bought $3.1 billion worth of Chinese solar cells last year, giving China more than half the American market for the devices.

Many solar panel installers in the United States have opposed tariffs on Chinese panels, contending that inexpensive imports have helped spur many homeowners and businesses to put solar panels on their rooftops. The new tariffs are likely to mean a substantial increase in the price of solar panels here.

Chinese officials have been indignant at American criticism of their solar power industry, pointing out that the United States has urged China for years to embrace renewable energy as a way to reduce air pollution, combat climate change and limit the need for oil imports from politically volatile countries in the Mideast.

Government support for solar energy is an important feature of China’s current Five-Year Plan, which runs through 2015, although Premier Wen Jiabao publicly cautioned in March that he was becoming concerned about overcapacity in the sector.

Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng - who was at the centre of a diplomatic crisis with Washington - is on his way to the United States.

The blind activist and his family boarded a flight to Newark, near New York, after being taken from a Beijing hospital to the capital’s airport.

Mr Chen recently spent six days in the US embassy in Beijing after escaping house arrest in north-east China.

He has been offered a fellowship at New York university.

Chen Guangcheng, a self-taught lawyer who campaigned against forced abortions under China’s one-child policy, was jailed for four years in 2006 for disrupting traffic and damaging property, and placed under house arrest after his release in 2010.

The United States is resuming sales of some weapons to Bahrain, but says it will not supply the Gulf state with any crowd control equipment.

The US State Department says the shipment will help Bahrain “maintain its external defence capabilities.”

Arms sales were frozen last year after the Bahraini government suppressed pro-democracy demonstrations.

Amnesty International says 60 people have been killed since the protests began in February 2011.

It is thought a frigate and other coast guard vessels will be supplied, along with upgraded engines for F-16 fighters.

The State Department says an order for Humvee all-terrain vehicles and a new type of wire-guided missile will not be included.

Bahrain is a key US ally in the Gulf, hosting the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet.

Officials in Washington say the Obama administration still has concerns about human rights in Bahrain.

But human rights campaigners have condemned this move, saying it is out of step with the United States’ commitment to reform in Bahrain.

Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng has telephoned a US Congressional hearing to plead for help in his attempts to leave China with his family.

Mr Chen said he feared for the safety of his family and wanted to meet visiting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton face-to-face.

The activist is in a Beijing hospital sealed off by Chinese police.

He had spent a week at the US embassy but left after initially accepting China’s assurances of his safety.

Mr Chen said that only after leaving the embassy did he fully realise the threats that had been made against his family members.

Activist Chen Guangcheng says he does not know when he will be allowed to leave China despite an offer from a US university.

Mr Chen, who spent six days at the US embassy, said US officials were still being barred from his hospital.

He told the BBC he had asked Chinese officials for help but had not started doing the paperwork for a passport.

On Sunday US Vice-President Joe Biden said a visa was waiting for Mr Chen as soon as he applied.

“[Chinese officials] promised that they would help me process the passports, but I haven’t been given an exact time. I haven’t started filling in the forms,” Mr Chen said.

“I hope they can help me process this because I’m lying in bed and can’t do it myself.”

Mr Chen said he had been able to talk to US officials.

An al-Qaeda leader in Yemen wanted in connection with the 2000 bombing of the American warship USS Cole has been killed in an air raid.

A tribal leader in the east of the country says Fahd al-Quso was killed by two missiles fired from a drone.

His death was confirmed by al-Qaeda and Yemen’s embassy in the US. At least one other man died in the strike.

The US had offered a $5m (£3.1m, 3.8m-euro) reward for information leading to his capture.

A US official welcomed the death of the “senior terrorist operative”. He told AFP news agency that al-Quso had been planning further attacks against the US and Yemen.

The USS Cole was attacked in October 2000 in the Yemeni port of Aden. Militants in a boat packed with explosives blew a hole in the destroyer’s side, killing 17 US sailors and wounding 40.

The US has never formally acknowledged the use of drones against Yemeni al-Qaeda suspects, but is thought to have carried out eight other attacks of this kind so far this year.

In April, The Washington Post newspaper said that the CIA was asking for authorisation to carry out more drone strikes in Yemen.

The State Department, responding to a wave of complaints from foreign students about abuses under a summer cultural exchange program, issued new rules on Friday significantly revising the types of jobs the students can do, prohibiting them from most warehouse, construction, manufacturing and food-processing work.

The rules are the most extensive changes the State Department has made to its largest cultural exchange program since several hundred foreign students protested last summer at a plant in Pennsylvania that packs Hershey’s chocolates. The students said they were forced to work on grueling production lines lifting heavy boxes, often on night shifts, isolated in the plant from any American workers.

After paycheck deductions, the students said, they were paid so little they could not afford to travel in the United States, as the program promised.

Robin Lerner, deputy assistant secretary of state for private sector exchange, said the department’s goal with the revisions was “to bring the program back to its core cultural purposes.”

The five-decade-old Summer Work Travel Program brings more than 100,000 foreign university students here each year to work for up to three months and then travel for a month. The program, which uses a visa known as J-1, is designed to give students who are not from wealthy backgrounds a chance to experience the United States. The students’ trips are arranged by American sponsoring agencies that find jobs and housing for them.

The department said “the work component” of the program “has too often overshadowed the core cultural component” that Congress intended. The department also said the changes responded to concerns raised by the students at the Hershey’s packing plant.

Those students were “concentrated in single locations for long hours in jobs that provided little or no opportunity to interact with U.S. citizens,” the department wrote to explain the rules. They were “exposed to workplace and safety hazards” and “subjected to predatory practices through wage deductions” for housing.

And so it came to pass that in 2012 — a year after the Arab awakening erupted — the United States made two financial commitments to the Arab world that each began with the numbers 1 and 3.

 It gave Egypt’s military $1.3 billion worth of tanks and fighter jets, and it gave Lebanese public-school students a $13.5 million merit-based college scholarship program that is currently putting 117 Lebanese kids through local American-style colleges that promote tolerance, gender and social equality, and critical thinking. I’ve recently been to Egypt, and I’ve just been to Lebanon, and I can safely report this: The $13.5 million in full scholarships has already bought America so much more friendship and stability than the $1.3 billion in tanks and fighter jets ever will.

So how about we stop being stupid? How about we stop sending planes and tanks to a country where half the women and a quarter of the men can’t read, and start sending scholarships instead?

US President Barack Obama has pledged to “finish the job” and end the Afghan war, addressing the US public live from a military base in Afghanistan.

Speaking on the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death, he thanked US troops and hailed plans to combat operations.

Mr Obama arrived in Afghanistan on a surprise visit to sign an agreement on future Afghan-US ties with President Hamid Karzai, ahead of a Nato summit.

At the signing, Mr Obama said it was “a historic moment” for both nations.

Mr Obama’s address comes as correspondents say public patience with the war in Afghanistan is wearing thin.

In the prime-time speech beamed back to the US, the president said that at the upcoming Nato summit, to be held in Chicago, the alliance would “set a goal for Afghan forces to be in the lead for combat operations across the country next year”.

US President Barack Obama has refused to comment on Chen Guangcheng, the Chinese dissident said to be at the US embassy after fleeing house arrest.

Mr Obama told a news conference he was “aware of press reports” on the issue, but would not make a statement on it.

Activists have claimed Mr Chen entered the US embassy in Beijing earlier this month, after slipping out of his home hundreds of kilometres away.

US and Chinese officials are thought to be in talks on Mr Chen’s fate.

The US has said it is concerned about reports that the Israeli government has decided to make legal under Israeli law three West Bank settlement outposts.

A state department spokeswoman said diplomats were “seeking clarification”, but stressed they did “not think this is helpful” to the peace process.

The US does not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity.

The Palestinians also condemned the decision to “formalise the status” of Bruchin, Rechelim and Sansana.

About 500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The settlements are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

The settler outposts are also illegal under Israeli law and the government agreed to remove them under the 2003 Road Map peace plan.

The Egyptian government has refused to license eight US civil society groups, including the election-monitoring Carter Centre, MENA the state news media reported.

The crackdown on foreign non-governmental organizations working in Egypt comes a month before presidential polls.

MENA said the Insurance and Social Affairs Ministry rejected the applications because their activities violated “the state’s sovereignty on its lands”.

The eight NGOs include the Carter Center, Seeds of Peace, Coptic Orphans, the Latter-day Saints Association and others.

US and Afghan negotiators have finalised a partnership agreement for the US role in Afghanistan after its forces withdraw at the end of 2014.

The draft agreement on their long-term relationship was signed in the Afghan capital Kabul after months of talks.

No details were released, with the deal to be reviewed by both presidents.

There have been sharp disagreements over how much financial support the US and Nato will provide after foreign troops leave.

Last week the Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on the US to make a written commitment to pay a minimum of $2bn (£1.2bn) towards the maintenance of Afghan forces.

The presidents of Sudan and South Sudan “must have the courage” to return to the negotiating table and resolve their differences peacefully, says US President Barack Obama.

He was speaking after South Sudan said it had ordered its troops to withdraw from the Heglig oil field in Sudan.

Within hours of Friday’s announcement, Sudan said it had retaken Heglig town.

South Sudanese forces captured the area last week, accusing Khartoum of using it as a base to launch attacks.

“We know what needs to happen,” said President Obama. “The government of Sudan must stop its military actions including aerial bombardments.

“It must give aid workers the access they need to save lives. And it must end its support for armed groups inside the South.”

Turning to the government of the newly independent South Sudan, Mr Obama said: “Likewise, the government of South Sudan must end its support for armed groups inside Sudan and it must cease its military actions across the border.

The escalating fighting and rhetoric between the two sides over the past week has led to fears of all-out war.

It is not clear whether Khartoum regained the area by force or whether South Sudanese troops withdrew, under intense international pressure.

South Sudan said its forces were still in the process of withdrawal; Information Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin told AFP it would take three days to complete the operations.

President Omar al-Bashir on Friday told supporters at a victory rally in Khartoum: “We thank God that he made successful your sons; and the security forces and the police force and the defence forces - he has made them victorious on this Friday.”

South Sudan seceded last July following a 2005 peace deal that ended a two-decade civil war in which more than 1.5 million people died.

On Thursday, South Sudan issued a statement saying it was not interested in war with its northern neighbour and that it would only withdraw from Heglig if the UN deployed monitors there.

North Korea duly launched its satellite mission from the Sohae base on the Chinese border but soon had to admit the venture was a failure.

The nation’s own engineers will be trying to find out precisely what went wrong but so, also, will analysts from the international community, who will be keen to assess just how far Pyongyang has progressed in its efforts to master rocket technology.

The 30m(100ft)-long Unha-3 vehicle is said to have lifted off at 07:39 local time on Friday (22:39 GMT Thursday), and headed south out over the Yellow Sea.

The rocket’s trajectory, according to North Korea, was intended to take it and its Earth observation satellite payload towards a 500km-high polar orbit.

Within the hour, however, officials from Japan, South Korea and the US were briefing reporters that the mission had failed.

America in particular had a number of military systems in the region able to track the ascent.

The available information suggests the rocket disintegrated about 90 seconds into its flight, just before first-stage separation and ignition of the second stage.

One account talked of an unusually bright flaring coming from the vehicle.

All that fits with data indicating debris fell into the Yellow Sea about 165km (103 miles) west of Seoul, well short of the impact site where the North Koreans had planned to drop the first stage on a nominal flight.

North Korea has moved into place a long-range rocket for a controversial launch later this month - amid reports it is also planning a nuclear test.

Pyongyang says the Unha-3 rocket, which it plans to launch between 12 and 16 April, will put a satellite into orbit.

But opponents of the move fear it is a disguised long-range missile test.

Meanwhile, South Korean officials say new satellite images suggest the North is preparing to carry out a third nuclear test.

The images show piles of earth and sand at the entrance of a tunnel at the Punggye-ri site, where tests of a nuclear bomb were previously carried out in 2006 and 2009, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reports.

US President Barack Obama is hosting three-way talks at the White House with the leaders of Canada and Mexico.

Talks usually centre on border issues and the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta).

This year the summit could also touch on a disputed US-Canada oil pipeline.

President Obama, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon are meeting weeks before a broader regional summit to be held in Colombia.

The Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, is to be held in two weeks’ time.

No major agreements are expected to be signed at Monday’s summit, which will see the three leaders hold a joint news conference.

The meeting was originally planned to take place in Hawaii in November, but had to be rescheduled after a top Mexican official was killed in a helicopter crash.

The plan, brokered by Kofi Annan, calls for a UN-monitored end to the fighting, the pull-out of troops from opposition cities and humanitarian access.

Syria agreed to the initiative on Tuesday, but violence has continued.

The issue is set to top the agenda in Baghdad, which is hosting its first major summit in more than 20 years.

The BBC’s Wyre Davies says expectations are not high, but the mere fact the Arab League is meeting in the Iraqi capital at all can be seen as a sign of progress for the country.

Earlier, the head of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, urged Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “to put commitments into immediate effect”.

“There is no time to waste,” he said, describing the plan as an “initial step forward”.

Mr Ban is due to meet key leaders at the summit to discuss how the UN can work with the Arab League to put Mr Annan’s proposal into action.

BURLINGTON, Vt. — President Obama said on Friday that there is enough oil in world markets to allow countries to rely less on imports from Iran, a step that could increase Western actions to deter Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

Mr. Obama is required by law to decide by March 30, and every six months after, whether the price and supply of non-Iranian oil is sufficient to allow for countries to cut their oil purchases from Iran.

Mr. Obama’s decision was announced Friday afternoon in a conference call. He made the decision after consultations with a number of oil exporters that had agreed to increase production. The decision comes even as gas prices have risen in recent months, a rise that his political advisers say could hamper his re-election efforts.

The new sanctions, passed as part of the defense budget and mandated by the Senate in a rare 100-to-0 vote, penalize foreign corporations or other entities that purchase oil from Iran’s central bank, which collects payment for most of the country’s energy exports. The penalties are meant to pressure Iran to curb its nuclear program.

The law includes loopholes that allow Mr. Obama to waive the measures if they threaten national security or if gas prices increase.

Gas prices in the United States have climbed about 19 percent this year on worries about a confrontation with Iran, investor speculation about higher prices and other factors. A gallon of gas currently costs an average of $3.93, up from about $3.30 a gallon in December. The rising prices have weighed on economic confidence and cut into household budgets, a concern for an Obama administration seeking re-election.

But since the law was enacted in December, the White House has engaged in a broad effort to prevent supply disruptions that might cause prices to spike and to persuade countries around the world to buy less oil and demand discounts from Iran. In the last three months, a number of high-ranking officials, including Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, have traveled around the world to rally support for the sanctions.

Countries including Saudi Arabia have increased production to make up for any lost production from Iran. “There is no rational reason why oil prices are continuing to remain at these high levels,” the Saudi oil minister, Ali Naimi, wrote in an opinion article in The Financial Times this week. “I hope by speaking out on the issue that our intentions — and capabilities — are clear. We want to see stronger European growth and realize that reasonable crude oil prices are key to this.”

American officials have also discussed a coordinated release of oil from national strategic reserves along with French and British officials, as publicly confirmed on Thursday by the French prime minister, François Fillon.

Additionally, the administration last week exempted Japan and 10 European countries, including Britain, France and Germany, from the new measures, given that the countries were already reducing oil imports from Iran.

In a statement, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that the country had “made progress in shrinking Iran’s oil export markets and isolating its Central Bank from the world financial system.”

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has rebuked US presidential hopeful Mitt Romney for saying Russia is the “number one geopolitical foe” of the US.

Mr Romney made the comments while criticising President Barack Obama for appearing to suggest a future deal with Russia on the issue of missile defence.

Mr Medvedev said Mr Romney’s comments “smelled of Hollywood” and advised him to “use his head”.

Moscow has long opposed US plans for a missile defence system in Europe.

In remarks caught by TV cameras on Monday during a summit in Seoul, Mr Obama had appeared to suggest to Mr Medvedev that he would have more “flexibility” on difficult issues such as missile defence after November’s US presidential election.

In an interview with CNN, Mr Romney had called Mr Obama’s remarks “alarming” and “troubling”.

“If he’s planning on doing more and suggests to Russia that he has things he’s willing to do with them, he’s not willing to tell the American people - this is to Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe,” Mr Romney said.

In response, Mr Medvedev said: “I recommend that all US presidential candidates… do at least two things: that they use their head and consult their reason when they formulate their positions, and that they check the time - it is now 2012, not the mid-1970s.

Regardless, one side’s bad behavior doesn’t excuse the other’s, and I’m still curious as to whether there’s any delineation between resistance and racism in the minds of fighters like the Boss. So I push him on the real goal of Hezbollah. Liberate and protect Lebanese land, or keep the fight going until all the Israelis are gone? I ask him to consider a scenario in which the Palestinians have cut a two-state deal, and the Israelis withdraw from the tiny parcels of land claimed by some factions as Lebanese. Would he feel obligated to continue fighting despite all that (likely impossible) progress in the region? “If all those things become true, then the Resistance stops being a national obligation and turns into a religious question,” he answers. “As Muslims, we feel a religious duty to liberate Jerusalem. But these sorts of questions can be addressed in many ways, while occupation can only be addressed with resistance.” He then says that Israelis have yet to learn that they can’t win a war in Lebanon because they’re fighting people with a homeland. In his view, having actual land to defend is critical. And for all his bravado about Hezbollah’s abilities, he points in the direction of Israel and eloquently summarizes a subject few Middle Eastern militants would dare address. “If the war is fought 500 meters that way, the resistance could never win,” he says. “We couldn’t beat the Israelis there, not on their land, by their homes.” I’ve never heard an Islamic militant ever admit that Israel is Israeli land. He continues by pointing out that in 1982, 50,000 trained and well-equipped Palestinian troops couldn’t keep the Israelis out of Beirut for a week. But by his count, less than 1,000 Hezbollah fighters did the job alone for 34 days in 2006. “Palestinians can’t fight because they have no homes to defend. There would already be a Palestine if it weren’t for the Palestinians.” In light of this revelation, I press him on what he thinks could stop this cycle of violence in the south. What if the Israelis left Lebanese lands, made peace with the Palestinians, and never threatened Lebanon again? “Some guys would consider violence the solution to the religious questions, like liberating Jerusalem. But doing so would mean the end of the Resistance,” he says. “So, peace?” I ask. He thinks for a second. “Sure,” he replies, without much conviction in his voice.

Q: Is President Obama giving away several Alaskan islands to Russia?

A: No. The U.S. has never claimed ownership of the islands identified in viral emails and websites. They lie far closer to the coast of Siberia than to Alaska.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday ordered a lower court to decide whether Congress has the authority to allow Americans born in Jerusalem to claim Israel as their birthplace on their passports.

The decision postpones resolution of a long-running dispute between Congress and the executive branch over the power to set foreign policy, in this case the highly fraught issue of whether to formally recognize Israel’s claim that Jerusalem is its capital.

At issue is whether Congress overstepped its authority when it passed a law in 2002 requiring that Americans born in Jerusalem be allowed to name Israel as their birthplace in passports and other official documents.

The State Department has refused to enforce the law, saying that it interferes with a matter of foreign policy that is the president’s to decide.

For more than half a century, the United States has not recognized any state as having sovereignty over Jerusalem, a central issue in the intractable diplomatic negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

The court, without settling the case on its merits, ruled that the balance of power between Congress and the president in foreign policy was not inherently beyond the reach of judicial review.

With only one dissent, the justices overturned and sent back for reconsideration a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, upholding a district court. The lower courts had thrown out the case on the grounds that the executive branch held exclusive power over the recognition of foreign sovereignty and that its disregard of Congressional instruction could not be challenged in court because the status of Jerusalem was a political question.

China and the US have agreed to co-ordinate their response to any “potential provocation” if North Korea goes ahead with a planned rocket launch, the White House says.

North Korea says the long-range rocket will carry a satellite. The US says any launch would violate UN resolutions and be a missile test.

US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao met on the margins of a nuclear summit in South Korea.

The launch is scheduled for April.

Its timing - between 12 and 16 April - is intended to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of North Korea’s late Great Leader Kim Il-sung.

WASHINGTON — The top allied commander in Afghanistan told Congress on Tuesday that he would not be recommending further American troop reductions until late this year, after the departure of the current “surge” forces and the end of the summer fighting season.

That timetable would defer one of the thorniest military decisions facing President Obama — the pace at which the United States removes its forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 — until after the November elections.

Gen. John R. Allen, a Marine four-star general who commands the American-led allied forces in Afghanistan, said that he remained optimistic about eventual success but that it was too early to begin shifting forces from battles in the south to the country’s turbulent eastern provinces.

He also acknowledged the deep sensitivities, especially given the current diplomatic crisis with Afghanistan, involved in handing over complete security control to Afghan forces, including over the commando night raids that American commanders say are critical to the war effort. These are the subject of intense negotiation, he testified.

General Allen said that only after reviewing the results of the next six months of fighting — at the end of which there will be 68,000 American troops remaining there — would he turn his attention to the pace of further reductions in the force.

But he repeatedly said that by the end of next year, Afghan forces would have taken over primary responsibility for operations across the country, allowing NATO’s combat role to be finished by the end of 2014, as currently scheduled.

WASHINGTON — A classified war simulation held this month to assess the repercussions of an Israeli attack on Iran forecasts that the strike would lead to a wider regional war, which could draw in the United States and leave hundreds of Americans dead, according to American officials.

The officials said the so-called war game was not designed as a rehearsal for American military action — and they emphasized that the exercise’s results were not the only possible outcome of a real-world conflict.

But the game has raised fears among top American planners that it may be impossible to preclude American involvement in any escalating confrontation with Iran, the officials said. In the debate among policy makers over the consequences of any Israeli attack, that reaction may give stronger voice to those in the White House, Pentagon and intelligence community who have warned that a strike could prove perilous for the United States.

The results of the war game were particularly troubling to Gen. James N. Mattis, who commands all American forces in the Middle East, Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia, according to officials who either participated in the Central Command exercise or who were briefed on the results and spoke on condition of anonymity because of its classified nature. When the exercise had concluded earlier this month, according to the officials, General Mattis told aides that an Israeli first strike would be likely to have dire consequences across the region and for United States forces there.

US President Barack Obama has warned North Korea that it will “achieve nothing by threats or by provocations”.

The warning comes as Pyongyang prepares to launch a long-range missile which it says will put a satellite in orbit.

Mr Obama was speaking after talks in Seoul with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, ahead of global summit on nuclear security.

The two leaders said North Korea risked further sanctions and isolation if it did not cancel its launch plans.

Mr Obama said Washington and Seoul were “absolutely united” that “bad behaviour” by North Korea would not be rewarded.

“North Korea knows its obligations and it must take irreversible steps to meet those obligations,” he said.

The launch will contravene an agreement Pyongyang reached last month which would have seen it receive food aid in exchange for a partial freeze on nuclear activities and an end to ballistics tests.

Mr Lee, who spoke alongside Mr Obama, said their countries had “agreed to respond sternly to any provocations and threats by the North and to continually enhance the firm South Korea-US defence readiness”.

But he said the international community stood ready to help North Korea improve the lives of its citizens if it chose a path of peace.

Mr Obama also criticised China, saying its refusal to challenge North Korea on the nuclear issue was not working as a policy.

In his latest book, Pakistan on the Brink, journalist Ahmed Rashid writes that he fears Pakistan “is on the brink of a meltdown.”

“I fear almost anything could [send it over the edge],” he tells Fresh Air ’s Terry Gross. “There could be a major terrorist attack in the U.S. or Europe which is traced back to Pakistan. … Then there’s a very, very critical economic crisis in the country. There’s no investment, no money, there’s no energy — I live in Lahore. We’ve had no gas for six months.”

On Tuesday’s Fresh Air, Rashid discusses the challenges facing Pakistan and Afghanistan in the post-Osama bin Laden era, as well as the complicated relationship the two countries have with the United States.

Last May, American forces stormed the compound in Pakistan where bin Laden was hiding for several years. Pakistan’s leaders have repeatedly said they didn’t know that bin Laden was living in a large house in Abbottabad, close to the nation’s capital of Islamabad.

“What happened after the killing of bin Laden was that the whole government and military spin machine put everything onto the Americans, saying, ‘This was an attack on Pakistan’s sovereignty,’ ” says Rashid. “Fair enough; it was an attack on Pakistan’s sovereignty because U.S. Special Forces entered Pakistan and killed him and then flew back. But what about this question that has been left hanging in the air, which is, ‘Are we to blame for not chasing him down? Or are we to blame that there were people involved looking after him?’ “

Since bin Laden’s death, he says, retired senior army officials have repeatedly gone on TV to detail conspiracy theories about the death of bin Laden and the attacks of Sept. 11.

“The main thrust is that everything that has gone wrong in Pakistan is due to the American presence in Afghanistan,” he says, adding that the Pakistani government hasn’t denied these claims. “And when these leading figures from past administrations [speak about these conspiracy theories] there’s no official denial.”

The US says it remains committed to Afghan reconciliation despite the suspension of talks by the Taliban.

“There is no likely resolution to the conflict in Afghanistan without a political resolution,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

The Taliban said they were halting preliminary talks with the US because Washington’s message had been “erratic” - an accusation denied by Mr Carney.

Meanwhile, President Karzai called on Nato troops to leave Afghan villages.

A presidential statement said that as a result of the killing of 16 villagers by a US soldier on Sunday, international forces had to withdraw from rural outposts and return to larger bases.

Earlier on Thursday, the president told visiting US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta that Afghan troops should take the lead for nationwide security in 2013.

The US government will not impose sanctions on Japan and 10 European Union nations that have reduced their oil imports from Iran.

Ordered by Congress in December, the sanctions aim to punish countries that continue to buy oil from Iran.

China, India and South Korea, major buyers of Iranian oil, were not exempt.

Iran faces international pressure to address concerns over its nuclear enrichment programme.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who announced the exemptions in a statement, said Japan and the EU nations had taken actions that were “not easy”.

“They had to rethink their energy needs at a critical time for the world economy and quickly begin to find alternatives to Iranian oil which many had been reliant on for their energy needs.”

The European countries that have been exempt are France, Germany, Belgium, Greece, Italy, Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the UK.

Under a US law that came into effect in 31 December, countries have until 28 June to show they have significantly reduced the amount of crude oil they purchase from Iran or face being cut off from the US financial system.

As tensions rise over Iran’s nuclear program, a majority of Americans want Israel and the U.S. to pursue diplomacy over military action.

President Obama insists “all options are on the table” to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. But Obama and American officials have cautioned Israel against a preemptive strike against Iran, urging diplomacy and sanctions instead. There is still a “window for diplomacy” to deter Iran’s nuclear development, Obama told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month. Netanyahu insists that Israel reserves the right to secure its own national security.

But only one in four Americans favor Israel launching a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program, according to a new University of Maryland poll. Seven out of 10 respondents believe the U.S. and other world leaders should continue to pursue negotiations with Iran. President Obama called for continued diplomacy in a joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday. Cameron agreed.

Only one in five respondents believe a strike against Iran would delay its ability to develop a nuclear weapon for more than five years, according to the poll. And about half of Americans polled believe the conflict would go on for years.

Six in 10 respondents believe Iran is actively working to produce nuclear weapons. Nine in 10 believe Iran will eventually develop them. U.S. intelligence agencies continue to believe there is no evidence Iran has decided to build a bomb. The tensions over Iran’s nuclear program appear to be taking a toll. Last month, Iran topped Gallup’s “greatest enemy” list. Threatening Israel, announcements of its growing nuclear program and the possibility that Iran could disrupt the flow of oil all contributed to the antipathy, according to the poll.

Afghanistan’s ambassador to the United States sought to defend President Hamid Karzai on Sunday after the Afghan president came under criticism for comparing the United States to a “demon.”

Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union with Candy Crowley,” the ambassador, Eklil Hakimi: said, “Our president is doing whatever any legitimate president would do. He is reflecting what our people are saying.”

But, he added, the people of Afghanistan were grateful to the American “taxpayers” for changes initiated since the American invasion in 2001, like greater freedom of the press, increased participation of women in politics and improvements in infrastructure.

Tensions between the United States and Afghanistan have been rising after a series of incidents, the killing of 16 Afghan villagers last week for which an American soldier has been arrested, the accidental burning of Korans in February, and the appearance in January of a video showing American troops urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban insurgents.

On Friday, as he met with the relatives of the victims of the killings, Mr. Karzai said, “Let’s pray for God to rescue us from these two demons,” referring to the United States and the Taliban. “There are two demons in our country now.”

A joint statement by the Afghan presidential palace and the country’s highest religious body also referred to the burnings of the Korans as “Satanic acts that will never be forgiven by apologies.”

Mr. Karzai has now called for NATO troops to be withdrawn from Afghan villages and confined to their bases, and the Taliban has said it was suspending peace talks with the United States.

An Iraqi militant group claims to have freed a US soldier it had been holding since last year.

The Promised Day Brigades, a Shia group loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, said in a news conference they would hand the soldier to the UN.

A video of the news conference shows a man in US military uniform telling the camera he was kidnapped in June.

The UN was unable to confirm the claims, and the US embassy said it was studying the video.

It was widely reported that only one US soldier, Ahmed Qusai al-Taie, was unaccounted for when the US pulled out of Iraq. But he was taken in 2006.

The BBC’s Rami Ruhayem in Baghdad, who has seen the video, says a spokeswoman names the soldier as Randy Michael, with a possible surname that is inaudible.

In the video, a person dressed in a US military uniform said he had been deployed to Iraq in 2003, and was abducted on 18 June last year.

He said had had been told that he was being freed for humanitarian reasons, and he went on to thank Mr Sadr.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has accused the US of not fully co-operating with a probe into the massacre of 16 civilians by an American serviceman.

The soldier accused of the killings is on his way to the US from Kuwait, where he was being held, and is expected to face a military tribunal there.

Afghan MPs had demanded the soldier be tried in public in Afghanistan.

Mr Karzai earlier met relatives of the dead, who demanded justice.

Men, women and children were shot and killed at close range as the US soldier apparently went on a rampage in villages close to a Nato base in the remote Panjwai district of southern Kandahar province.

President Karzai told reporters that the chief of the official investigation into those killings had not received the co-operation it expected from the US.

He also said the problem of civilian casualties at the hands of Nato forces had “gone on for too long”

“This is by all means the end of the rope here,” Mr Karzai said.

On Wednesday Mr Karzai told the US that it must pull back its troops from village areas and allow Afghan security forces to take the lead, in an effort to reduce such civilian deaths.

The Taliban also called off peace talks in the wake of the killings although they made no mention of the massacre in their statement.

The European Parliament has backed a deal that will increase EU imports of beef from the US and Canada and help European food exporters.

A row over growth hormones used on North American cattle ranches led to a trade war lasting more than 20 years.

The new deal sets an annual EU quota of 48,200 tonnes for high-quality North American beef from cattle that have not been treated with growth hormones.

North America will lift import tariffs on a range of European farm produce.

An EU ban on hormone-treated meat and meat products remains in place, even though the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled in 1997 that it was illegal.

The EU ban, dating back to 1988, was based on concerns about the addition of six hormones to more than 90% of American beef.

But now, US farmers are no longer using the hormones, according to Robert Sturdy MEP, a UK Conservative and Vice-President of the European Parliament’s Trade Committee.

Mr Sturdy, a farmer himself, said the trade deal would be especially important for the European dairy sector, “which has had a difficult time”.

Unique cheeses like Stilton and Roquefort, protected by EU country of origin rules, are popular among Americans yet “basically it has been impossible to export these specialist products”, he told the BBC.

He described the beef deal as “a first tentative step to getting better trade relations with the US and Canada”. “Now is the time to open up markets, with food prices going up and shortages across the world,” he added.

The American soldier accused of killing 16 civilians in Afghanistan on Sunday has been flown out of the country.

Officials say legal proceedings against the unnamed staff sergeant will now be conducted in another country. It is not clear where he has been taken.

The victims were shot in their homes, causing outrage across Afghanistan.

The transfer coincides with a visit by US defence secretary Leon Panetta. His arrival in Afghanistan was marred by an incident involving a vehicle.

A stolen pick-up truck was driven at high speed onto the runway where Mr Panetta’s plane was intended to stop at the British base in Helmand province, Camp Bastion.

The vehicle ended crashing into a ditch and bursting into flames. The Afghan driver suffered burns and has been arrested.

A Nato serviceman was injured when the vehicle was stolen. Neither Mr Panetta nor anyone on board the plane was at risk at any time, officials said.

The case of an American soldier accused of killing Afghan civilians has roiled political support in Congress for the military campaign in Afghanistan, with a prominent Republican senator accusing his party’s candidates for president of undermining the nation’s military commanders.

“When Republican candidates for president, when Republican politicians talk about being for early withdrawal, it makes it harder for the general to do his job,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a senior member of the Armed Services Committee. “I want to be in a Republican Party that understands the strategic consequences of winning and losing in Afghanistan and will back up a general who deserves to be backed up.”

Both former Senator Rick Santorum and former Speaker Newt Gingrich suggested in the wake of the massacre that the country needed to reassess its military commitment to the conflict in Afghanistan.

“We have to either make the decision to make a full commitment, which this president has not done, or we have to decide to get out, and probably get out sooner,” Mr. Santorum said on Monday.

Appearing on CBS’s “Face The Nation” on Sunday, Mr. Gingrich said: “We need to understand that our being in the middle of countries like Afghanistan is probably counterproductive. We’re not prepared to be ruthless enough to force them to change. And yet we are clearly an alien presence.”

Such sentiment remains an outlier for the Republican Party, but more names are joining those counseling faster withdrawal. Two Republican senators, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah, joined 22 Democratic senators last week in a letter calling for a quicker end to the war.

Newt Gingrich has said that he fears the Afghanistan war may be a mission “that we’re going to discover is not doable.” Several of his rivals are moving in a similar direction.

Amid a series of bloody and troubling episodes in Afghanistan that have inflamed Afghan opinion against the United States, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are now calling for a reassessment of American policy there — suggesting that it may be time to withdraw troops sooner than the Obama administration has planned.

Their views echo recent polls that show public support for the Afghan war has fallen sharply among voters of all parties.

A US soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians in a night-time rampage acted alone, US officials say.

The Pentagon said in a media briefing that the killings, in the early hours of Sunday, were “tragic” but insisted it was an isolated incident.

The soldier has not been named, but he is reported to be in his 30s with three children.

Afghan MPs earlier passed a motion saying civilians have lost patience with foreign troops.

The incident has put more strain on relations between Afghans and foreign forces.

Anti-US sentiment is already high after soldiers burned some copies of the Koran at a Nato base in Kabul last month.

US officials have repeatedly apologised for the Koran incident, which sparked a series of protests and attacks that killed at least 30 people and six US troops.

The Taliban has promised revenge attacks for the latest killings, but a tribal elder told the BBC that they would not be calling for protests.

Human rights lawyers are to sue Foreign Secretary William Hague over the alleged use of intelligence in assisting US drone attacks in Pakistan.

The case is being raised at the High Court in London on behalf of Noor Khan, whose father was killed in a US strike.

Lawyers from Leigh Day and Co say civilian intelligence officers who give information to the US may be liable as “secondary parties to murder”.

The Foreign Office said it did not comment on ongoing legal proceedings.

The lawyers, which include some from the international charity Reprieve, want to establish what official UK policy or guidance is with regard to assisting the US in such cases.

Leigh Day and Co says Mr Khan’s father Malik Daud was part of a council of elders holding a meeting in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan, when a drone missile hit the group.

The firm said it had “credible, unchallenged” evidence Mr Hague oversaw a policy of passing British intelligence to US forces planning attacks against militants.

A US soldier in Afghanistan has killed at least 16 civilians and wounded five after entering their homes in Kandahar province, senior local officials say.

He left his military base in the early hours of the morning and opened fire in at least two homes; women and children were among the dead.

Nato said it was investigating the “deeply regrettable incident”.

Anti-US sentiment is already high in Afghanistan after US soldiers burnt copies of the Koran last month.

US officials have apologised repeatedly for the incident at a Nato base in Kabul, but they failed to quell a series of protests and attacks that killed at least 30 people and six US troops.

Local people have reportedly gathered near the base in Panjwai district to protest about Sunday’s killings, and the US embassy is advising against travel to the area.

Lt Gen Adrian Bradshaw, deputy commander of Nato-led forces, said he was unable to “explain the motivation behind such callous acts”, adding that “our thoughts and prayers are with those caught in this tragedy”.

China has blocked purchases of Airbus planes by Chinese firms in reaction to a disputed European carbon tax, the head of Airbus’s parent company, EADS, has said.

EADS chief executive Louis Gallois says Airbus is being subjected to “retaliation measures” by China.

The EU imposed a carbon tax on airlines which took effect on 1 January.

China has not commented, and it is not clear whether it is official policy or a negotiating ploy, analysts say.

“The Chinese government refuses to approve airlines’ orders for long-haul aeroplanes,” Mr Gallois told a news conference as he presented the company’s annual results.

Mr Gallois said opposition by Beijing could affect the sales of at least two dozen long-haul A330 planes this year and next.

This appears to be the heaviest weapon yet deployed in the battle between the EU and its opponents over charging airlines for their global warming emissions, says BBC environment correspondent Richard Black.

He says it is surprising because tensions appeared to be decreasing a couple of weeks ago, when countries including China decided not to pursue legal action against the EU, but pursue a negotiated outcome.

President Obama challenged his Republican critics to make a case to the American people for a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities if they really believe that is the right course to follow, throwing down an election-year challenge to the men who are vying to succeed him and who say that his Iran policy has been too weak.

“This is not a game,” Mr. Obama said during a news conference at the White House timed to coincide with Super Tuesday voting in the Republican primaries in a number of crucial states. Mr. Obama gave a staunch defense of his administration’s actions to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions and said that tough sanctions put in place by the United States and Europe were starting to work and were part of the reason Iran had returned to the negotiation table.

“The one thing we have not done is we have not launched a war,” Mr. Obama said. “If some of these folks think we should launch a war, let them say so, and explain to the American people.”

The House voted on Tuesday to ensure that the United States could impose duties on subsidized goods from China and Vietnam , overwhelmingly rejecting a conservative group’s attempt to portray it as a tax increase.

The bill, which was passed 370 to 39 and addresses a court ruling, now goes to President Obama, who is expected to sign it into law. The Senate passed the bill on Monday.

“China distorts the free market by giving enormous subsidies to its producers and exporters, and our companies and workers should not be expected to compete against the deep pockets of the Chinese government,” Dave Camp, a Michigan Republican who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said during debate.

The Obama administration helped draw up the bipartisan bill after an appeals court ruled in December that the Commerce Department did not have authority to impose countervailing — or antisubsidy — duties on goods from “nonmarket economies.”

The decision endangered countervailing duties on about two dozen goods from China and Vietnam worth more than $4 billion in trade, and potential new duties in cases involving solar panels and turbine towers from China.

Supporters say current duties protect 80,000 American jobs. They cover steel, aluminum, paper, chemicals, other products from China and plastic shopping bags from Vietnam.

The vote gave both Republicans and Democrats a chance to show they are being tough on China, which many Americans see as an unfair trader. Last year, United States imports from China totaled a record $399.3 billion.

Separately, the United States began action on Tuesday at the World Trade Organization to open India’s market for poultry meat and eggs, saying an Indian ban on United States imports intended to stop the spread of bird flu was not based on sound science.

India’s ban in the name of protecting local poultry producers from losses caused by avian influenza is “clearly a case of disguising trade restrictions by invoking unjustified animal health concerns,” Ron Kirk, the United States trade representative, said.

The poultry industry welcomed the move, which it said could pry open a market for poultry exports conservatively valued at more than $300 million.

Mitt Romney criticized the Obama administration’s relations with Iran in a speech delivered via satellite to The American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington.
Former Gov. Mitt Romney vowed to “bring the current policy of procrastination toward Iran to an end” if elected president, telling a huge conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that he would impose “crippling sanctions,” station “carriers and warships at Iran’s door” and suspend all diplomatic relations.

“Hope is not a foreign policy,” he said. “I will make sure Iran knows of the very real peril that awaits if it becomes nuclear.

“I will be ready to engage diplomacy,” he added. “But I will be just as ready to engage our military might.”

Less than an hour after former Gov. Mitt Romney vowed to make Jerusalem his first foreign destination if elected president, one of his rivals for the Republican nomination, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich , went one better, promising to move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on “Day 1” of his prospective presidency.

Mr. Gingrich, speaking by satellite to some 13,000 people at the conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said that if elected, he would also immediately “initiate a strategy in the tradition of Reagan, Thatcher and Pope John Paul II to undermine and replace the Iranian dictatorship by every popular method short of war.”

“In a Gingrich administration, we would not keep talking while the Iranians keep building,” he said to strong applause.

“The red line is not the morning the bomb goes off, the red line is not the morning our intelligence community tells us they’ve failed once again,” he added. “The red line is now.”

While Mr. Romney’s campaign distributed an advance text of his remarks, and former Senator Rick Santorum appeared live at the conference to give a full speech, Mr. Gingrich spoke for just a couple of minutes and then said he would take questions from a panel. But there was no panel assembled as there had been for Mr. Romney. (Among the questions: what he remembers most of his visits to Israel – Mr. Romney managed to parlay that into policy, saying it was the Jerusalem stone, which he described as a symbol of the importance of a united capital). So Mr. Gingrich waxed extemporaneously about the Middle East.

“There’s something profoundly wrong with our entire approach to the region and our entire strategy for dealing with radical Islam,” he said, condemning the Obama Administration for “failing intellectually.”

“We need to be clear that the teaching of hatred, the recruiting of martyrs” are not “compatible with a peace process and we will not tolerate engaging in a process with people who engage in those behaviors.”

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta pledged to an influential pro-Israel lobbying group on Tuesday that if the pressure of diplomacy and sanctions failed to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon, the United States was fully prepared to take military action as a last resort.

“Make no mistake: When all else fails, we will act,’’ Mr. Panetta told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Mr. Panetta’s remarks tracked closely with those of President Obama, who spoke to the same group on Sunday, and were meant to drive home the president’s message that Israel could trust the United States in the growing confrontation with Iran. Like Mr. Obama, Mr. Panetta said that United States “does not bluff’’ and “we will keep all options, including military action,’’ on the table.

The defense secretary also appeared to allude to the hard-hitting Iran talk coming from the Republican presidential candidates, who spoke by video feed to Aipac on Tuesday. “In this town, it’s easy to talk tough,’’ Mr. Panetta said. “Acting tough is a hell of a lot more important.’’

But he declared: “No greater threat exists to the security of Israel and to the entire region and indeed to the United States than a nuclear-armed Iran.”

Iran’s Supreme Court has overturned the death sentence given to an Iranian-American national accused of spying for the CIA and ordered a retrial.

Judges had found the verdict against Amir Mirzai Hekmati was “not complete” and referred his case to an affiliate court, a judiciary spokesman said.

In January, Mr Hekmati was convicted of “co-operating with a hostile nation, membership of the CIA and trying to implicate Iran in terrorism”.

The US has urged Iran to release him.

It has repeatedly insisted the allegations that Mr Hekmati either worked for, or was sent to Iran by the CIA, are “simply untrue”.

Mr Hekmati’s family, who live in Arizona, have also said the charges are fabricated and that he was in Iran last year to visit his grandmothers.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told US President Barack Obama that Israel must always remain “master of its fate”.

Meeting the Israeli leader at the White House, Mr Obama said a nuclear Iran would be an “unacceptable” development.

On Sunday, Mr Obama told a pro-Israel conference in Washington there had been too much “loose talk” of war with Iran.

Israel fears Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons, although Tehran insists its nuclear plans are peaceful.

“The bond between our two countries is unbreakable,” Mr Obama said, as the two leaders sat side-by-side in the Oval Office.

The president emphasised: “We believe there is still a window that allows for a diplomatic resolution,” but added that the US would consider “all options” in dealing with Iran.

Meanwhile, Mr Netanyahu said Israel “must have the ability to defend itself, by itself, against any threat”.

Benjamin Netanyahu: “My supreme responsibility… is to ensure that Israel remains the master of its fate”

In June 2011, the ACLU filed suit against the State Department to enforce a FOIA request seeking 23 embassy cables previously disclosed by WikiLeaks. The agency released redacted versions of 11 and withheld the other 12 in full. Learn more »

The five excerpts below show the government’s selective and self-serving decisions to withhold information. Because the leaked versions of these cables have already been widely distributed, the redacted releases provide unique insight into the government’s selective decisions to hide information from the American public.

Seventeen foreign democracy activists at the centre of a row between Egypt and the US have left the country, a day after a travel ban was lifted.

The group worked at non-governmental organisations and other institutions that were raided by the Egyptian authorities in December.

The defendants in the case are Egyptian, American, Palestinian, Norwegian, Serbian and German.

The case caused a major rift, risking $1.3bn (£813m) in US aid to Egypt.

Mena, the official Egyptian news agency, reported that the Americans had arrived at Cairo airport in five vans, accompanied by a US embassy official.

Police in the Egyptian capital raided the offices of 17 NGOs in December and confiscated documents and computers, before imposing the travel ban a month later.

Forty-three activists were accused, but some of them left the country.

They faced charges including inciting protests against the nation’s military rulers, obtaining international funds illegally, and failing to register their organisations with the government.

Judges in the case resigned on Tuesday, citing “embarrassment”, and it is not clear if charges will now be dropped.

Critics said the investigation was an effort by Egypt’s ruling generals to silence their detractors.

But Egyptian officials said the inquiry was a judicial not a political matter.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday that reports the travel ban had been lifted were encouraging.

This is a whole new way to use the term “deterrence”. Maybe you were under the impression that America already has a deterrent against an Iranian nuclear threat, namely our arsenal of over 5,000 strategic nuclear warheads. Think again! Mr Loyola wants to deter Iran from trying to build a nuclear warhead. But that’s not all: he wants to deter Iran from failing to convince the entire world that it has definitely given up any effort to build a nuclear warhead. To do that, we need to have a “clear deterrent threat of military action”. In other words, we need to set a deadline for an attack on Iran if it has not entirely convinced us that it has given up trying to develop the technology to build nuclear weapons.

This is sort of like me trying to deter you from failing to say “uncle” by putting you in a headlock and displaying a clear deterrent threat to break your arm. Or, to be more charitable, like Russia deterring Georgia from failing to recognise the independence of South Ossetia by massing tank columns on the Georgian border. It’s not the way I would normally use the term “deterrence”, and threatening to launch a first strike on Iran is not what I would normally think of as “prudence and precaution”. But it’s clearly one way war hawks are going to present the Iranian situation going forward, so keep an eye out for it.

A senior US military official has said that the issue of food aid for North Korea is now linked to political conditions.

Admiral Robert Willard, commander of the US Pacific Fleet, made the comments to a Senate committee on Tuesday.

He said conditions being discussed for food aid resumption included talks on ending North Korea’s nuclear programme

This contradicts official US policy, where the nuclear programme is separate from the provision of food aid.

North Korea relies on international aid to feed its people.

“There are conditions that are going along with the negotiations with regard to the extent of food aid,” Adm Willard told the US Senate Armed Forces Committee.

He said “preconditions” for assistance “now include discussions of cessation of nuclearisation and ballistic missile testing and the allowance of IAEA perhaps back into Yongbyon [reactor]”.

In 2009, International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors were asked to leave Yongbyon as denuclearisation talks between North Korea and its dialogue partners - the US, China, Russia, South Korea and Japan - broke down.

North Korea has agreed to suspend uranium enrichment, as well as nuclear and long-range missile tests, following talks with the US.

The US State Department said Pyongyang had also agreed to allow UN inspectors to monitor its reactor in Yongbyon to verify compliance with the measures.

In return, the US is finalising 240,000 tonnes of food aid for the North.

The move comes two months after Kim Jong-un came to power following the death of his father, Kim Jong-il.

Correspondents say the move could pave the way for the resumption of six-party disarmament negotiations with Pyongyang, which last broke down in 2009.

Egypt has lifted a travel ban barring seven US pro-democracy organisation workers from leaving the country, judicial officials in Cairo have said.

They are among 16 Americans who are accused of trying to foment unrest in Egypt - the other nine have already left the country.

Forty-three activists in total face charges such as inciting protests against the nation’s military rulers.

The case has caused some of the worst US-Egyptian tensions in decades.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday she was not able to confirm reports that the travel ban had been lifted.

`The Arab/Muslim awakening phase is over. Now we are deep into the counter-revolutionary phase, as the dead hands of the past try to strangle the future. I am ready to consider any ideas of how we in the West can help the forces of democracy and decency win. But, ultimately, this is their fight. They have to own it, and I just hope it doesn’t end — as it often does in the land of dragons — with extremists going all the way and the moderates just going away.

Amid heightened tensions with the West over its nuclear program , Iran on Tuesday called for negotiations on a treaty banning nuclear weapons and condemned their production or possession as “a great sin.”

There were two ways to engage with Iran on its nuclear program , engagement or confrontation, the Iranian Foreign Minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, said in a statement to the Conference on Disarmament here in Geneva. He said that Iran, “confident of the peaceful nature of its nuclear program, has always insisted on the first alternative.”

Mr. Salehi’s statement came only days after the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency expressed concern over the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program. The watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency , offered its assessment after a visit to Iran by its inspectors in which Iran denied them access to military facilities linked to the nuclear program.

The I.A.E.A. reported in November that it had “credible” information that the facilities at Parchin, south west of the capital, Tehran, included an explosives containment chamber used for experiments that were “strong indicators” of possible nuclear weapons development.

Echoing sentiments expressed in speeches by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Mr. Salehi denied the nuclear program had a military purpose, saying Iran would be a stronger country without nuclear arms.

“We do not see any glory, pride or power in the nuclear weapons, quite the opposite,” he said, adding that on the basis of a religious decree issued by Ayatollah Khamenei, “the production possession, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons are illegitimate, futile, harmful, dangerous and prohibited as a great sin.”

He said the existence of nearly 23,000 nuclear weapons in the world posed “the gravest threat” to sustainable international security and that as long as they existed there would always be a risk of their use and proliferation.

As violence continued to rage in Syria on Monday, the country’s Interior Ministry announced that voters had approved a new Constitution by a margin of almost 9-to-1 in a referendum on Sunday that Western leaders labeled a farce.

In a bulletin across the bottom of the screen on state television, the ministry said 89 percent of the voters, or nearly 7.5 million of the 8.4 million people who cast ballots, had voted in favor of the Constitution — an offer of reform that critics dismissed as too little, too late.

More than 750,000 no votes were cast, or about 9 percent of the total, the ministry said, while nearly 133,000 ballots, or 1.6 percent, were rejected as spoiled. The turnout exceeded 57 percent of the more than 14 million eligible voters, according to the ministry.

After a morning of new shelling in the beleaguered city of Homs and elsewhere on Monday, some Western leaders disparaged the referendum as having no credibility. Some of them spoke even before the result was announced.

A new report from Amnesty International released on Monday paints a portrait of the Iranian government’s tightening grip on speech and civil society.

Dozens of Iranian artists, journalists, bloggers and human rights activists have been arrested in what the rights group calls a “wave of repression” that began with the disputed presidential elections of 2009 and has surged ahead of parliamentary elections this week.

“They’re just arresting anyone who doesn’t toe the line,” Elise Auerbach, the group’s Iran country specialist, said in a telephone interview. “The government just seems to be tightening the noose around freedom of information in Iran.”

The 70-page report, published on Monday, gathers together many examples that have been previously reported in the press — from the arrests of BBC filmmakers to the house arrests of the opposition leaders Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hussein Mousavi — in order to construct an argument that the situation in the country has deteriorated over time. More than 10 journalists and bloggers have been arrested in recent weeks, according to the report.

One of the most prominent dissidents discussed in the report is Jafar Panahi, the celebrated filmmaker whose case was discussed on The Lede earlier today.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan called on the Afghan Taliban to start talks with the Kabul government on Friday, lending fresh diplomatic momentum to an American-sponsored peace process that is anchored in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, but which experts say is still advancing at a perilously slow pace.

Following a phone discussion with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, on Tuesday, the Pakistani prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, issued a statement calling on the Taliban and “all other Afghan groups, including Hizb-e-Islami,” a pro-Taliban militant group with historical ties to Pakistan, to participate in what is referred to as a reconciliation process.

US President Barack Obama has hailed the swearing in of a new president in Yemen as a “new beginning” for the country.

Mr Obama said the US would be “a steadfast partner to Yemen” in its transition to democracy.

He also offered US condolences for the deaths of 26 people in a car bombing in Yemen’s southern Hadramawt province.

The attack came hours after Yemen’s new President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi was sworn in, in the capital Sanaa.

Mr Hadi has replaced Ali Abdullah Saleh, who resigned after months of protest.

The North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ordered the military to launch a “powerful retaliatory strike” if provoked by the South, the North’s state-run media reported on Sunday.

Mr. Kim’s statement, issued during a visit to military units on the country’s southern coast that faces a string of islands manned by South Korean marines, comes a day before the United States and South Korea are scheduled to begin a massive joint military exercise.

Senior senators met Thursday in Havana with President Raúl Castro of Cuba and with an imprisoned American aid worker, but they reported no immediate breakthrough on Friday on winning the American’s freedom.

Senators Patrick J. Leahy , Democrat of Vermont, and Richard C. Shelby , Republican of Alabama, met with Mr. Castro for more than two hours on Thursday night, the first high-level meeting between the two countries in nearly two years. The senators offered to take the aid worker, Alan Gross, home with them.

“I said if he’d like us to take this issue off his hand, we’d be happy to take Mr. Gross on the plane when we left,” Mr. Leahy said in a phone interview from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. “He basically said, ‘Nice try.’”

Senator Chris Coons , a Delaware Democrat who along with Mr. Leahy met Thursday with Mr. Gross at a military prison hospital in Havana, the capital, said prison conditions “are not great.” But he said Mr. Gross appeared to be treated better than a typical Cuban prisoner.

“He’s lost a stunning amount of weight,” Mr. Coons said. “He is very thin.”

The senators are part of a group of six lawmakers traveling to Cuba, Haiti and Colombia to widen agricultural trade with Cuba, inspect recovery efforts from the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and discuss antidrug efforts in South America. Also in the group are Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, and Representatives Xavier Becerra, Democrat of California, and Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont.

The meeting with Mr. Castro was the first high-level contact since former President Jimmy Carter dined with him in April 2010. The imprisonment of Mr. Gross has chilled any thaw that might have happened in the wake of the resignation of the longtime Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, and the assumption of the presidency by his brother Raúl.

Nato has withdrawn all its personnel from Afghan ministries after two senior US officers were shot dead in the interior ministry building in Kabul.

Nato said an “individual” had turned his gun on the officers, believed to be a colonel and major, and had not yet been identified or caught.

Nato commander Gen John Allen condemned the attack as “cowardly”.

The shootings come amid five days of deadly protests over the burning of copies of the Koran by US soldiers.

Political and religious conservatives like these GOP candidates rush to defend the culture wars from their faith perspectives, but when it comes to pursuing preemptive war against a country that has attacked us, they are silent on their faith, and on the explicit teaching of Jesus that peacemaking is blessed.

Why the faith silence when it comes to preemptive war? Could it be because their faiths don’t support attacking someone who has not attacked you?

An inflammatory call by an American congressman for the secession of Pakistan’s largest province has sparked uproar in the country, injecting fresh complications into stalled efforts to restart diplomatic relations between Washington and Islamabad.

The furor stems from a nonbinding resolution introduced Friday by Representative Dana Rohrabacher , Republican of California, which stated that the people of Baluchistan, a sprawling western province racked by a seven-year-old separatist insurgency, should “have the right to self-determination and to their own sovereign country.”

Although the bill has little chance of success in Congress, it drew a furious reaction from Pakistani politicians and media, with Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani calling it an attack on Pakistani sovereignty, while the new ambassador to Washington, Sherry Rehman, warned it would “seriously impact Pakistan-U.S. relations.”

Media reports here accused Mr. Rohrabacher of seeking to “balkanize” Pakistan, or of acting at the behest of American intelligence agents who, the reports said, are seeking to pressure Pakistan into establishing covert listening posts on the border with Iran. Mr. Rohrabacher and Obama administration officials rejected those accusations.

For much of the last year, the Republican candidates for president have hammered President Obama ‘s handling of the Middle East peace effort, hoping to drive a wedge between Mr. Obama and Jewish voters and other supporters of Israel over the issue of Israel’s security.

Now, the rising tensions over Iran’s nuclear ambitions — and the growing possibility of an Israeli-led strike on Iran’s facilities that could come as early as this summer — has once again brought the issue of Israel to the forefront of the presidential campaign.

The White House announced on Monday that Mr. Obama will host Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, at the White House early next month. The meeting comes amid reports that the United States is cautioning Israel against launching a strike.

A statement from the White House said the visit was “part of the continuous and intensive dialogue between the United States and Israel and reflects our unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security.” Mr. Obama dispatched his national security adviser to Israel over the last several days to discuss the Iranian situation and other issues.

But Mr. Obama’s Republican rivals are likely to try to use the White House meeting on March 5 — which comes on the day before the Super Tuesday primaries — to renew their attacks on an administration they say has not done enough to help protect and support Israel.

On Monday, bags of these books arrived at the Bagram Air Base in a dump truck escorted by a military vehicle. A number of Afghans working in the area rushed screaming at the two soldiers they saw throwing the bags into an incineration pit, and some workers reached into the fire to extract the volumes.

A NATO spokesman said the books had been gathered at a detention facility for suspected insurgents and inadvertently given to troops for incineration.

The NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John R. Allen, issued a profuse apology “to the president of Afghanistan, the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, and most importantly, to the noble people of Afghanistan,” that confirmed the episode, but portrayed it as absolutely unintentional.

With the Syrian government continuing its deadly crackdown on its citizens, two senior American senators who were on their way to the Middle East spoke out strongly on Sunday in favor of arming the Syrian opposition forces.

The senators, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both Republicans, laid out a series of diplomatic, humanitarian and military aid proposals that would put the United States squarely behind the effort to topple President Bashar al-Assad of Syria . The senators, both of whom are on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that rebel fighters deserved to be armed and that helping them take on the Syrian government would aid Washington’s effort to weaken Iran .

Syria relies on Iran for financial and military support, and the governments in Damascus and Tehran have sectarian ties as well: Iran has strongly backed the Syrian Shiite minority and the offshoot Alawite sect that makes up Syria’s ruling class.

“I believe there are ways to get weapons to the opposition without direct United States involvement,” Mr. McCain said. “The Iranians and the Russians are providing Bashar Assad with weapons . People that are being massacred deserve to have the ability to defend themselves.”

“So I am not only not opposed,” he said, “but I am in favor of weapons being obtained by the opposition.”

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea’s Workers’ Party will hold a conference in mid-April, the government announced Monday, affording its new leader, Kim Jong-un, the opportunity to inherit top party posts held by his late father.

Neither the meeting’s date nor the agenda was disclosed, but party conferences have in the past helped leaders bolster their authority. At the most recent conference in September 2010 — the first in 30 years — Mr. Kim made his debut as his father’s successor and was made vice chairman of the party’s Central Military Commission. At this one, he and his closest aides are expected to dole out important party posts among themselves and their trusted associates.

Iran ’s government ordered a halt to oil exports to Britain and France on Sunday, in what may be only an initial response to the European Union decision to cut off Iranian oil imports and freeze central bank assets beginning in July.

Britain and France depend little on Iranian oil, however, so their targeting may be a mostly symbolic act, a function of the strong positions Paris and London have taken in trying to halt Iranian nuclear enrichment and bring pressure to bear on Syria, one of Tehran’s closest allies.

Tehran may also be reluctant, when its economy has been damaged by existing sanctions, to deprive itself of revenues from its larger European customers. At the same time, it may be seeking to divide the 27-nation European Union between those who depend on Iranian oil and those who do not.

Sunday’s order, according to the Mehr News Agency in Tehran, came from the Iranian oil minister, Rostam Qassemi, who had warned this month that Tehran would cut off oil exports to “hostile” European nations. On Sunday, the ministry spokesman, Ali Reza Nikzad-Rahbar, confirmed that shipments to Britain and France had been cut off, and said on the ministry Web site, “We have our own customers and have no problem to sell and export our crude oil to new customers.”

At the same time, according to the Mehr agency, an official at the Oil Ministry said Iran was seeking longer-term contracts of two to five years with other European nations.

Zhao Yan, a Chinese journalist and dissident living in New York, said on Friday that he was prevented by Chinese officials from entering a room at the White House for a news conference on Tuesday with President Obama and the likely future leader of China, Xi Jinping.

In an interview with The Lede, Mr. Zhao said he had been granted access by the White House to cover the event for Boxun.com , a Chinese-language news site based in the United States. But once inside, he said, officials from China’s delegation identified him and asked that he be barred from the room where the two leaders were delivering prepared remarks.

Mr. Zhao said through an interpreter that he wanted to ask Mr. Xi whether he would do more to support human rights in China than his predecessors have.

The White House disputed his account, saying that the incident was the result of a miscommunication and that Mr. Zhao was simply not among the limited number of American and Chinese pool reporters approved for the small event. He had been granted entry into the White House only for the daily briefing, later that afternoon.

Watching the Syrian Army pummel the Syrian town of Homs to put down the rebellion there against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad is the remake of a really bad movie that starred Bashar’s father, Hafez, exactly 30 years ago this month. I know. I saw the original.

It was April 1982 and I had just arrived in Beirut as a reporter for The New York Times. I quickly heard terrifying stories about an uprising that had happened in February in the Syrian town of Hama, led by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. Word had it (there were no Internet or cellphones) that then-President Hafez al-Assad had quashed the rebellion by shelling whole Hama neighborhoods, then dynamiting buildings, some with residents still inside. That May, I got a visa to Syria, just as Hama had been reopened. The Syrian regime was “encouraging” Syrians to drive through the broken town and reflect on its meaning. So I just hired a cab and went.

It was stunning. Whole swaths of buildings had, indeed, been destroyed and then professionally steamrolled into parking lots the size of football fields. If you kicked the ground, you’d come up with scraps of clothing, a tattered book, a shoe. Amnesty International estimated that as many as 20,000 people were killed there. I had never seen brutality at that scale, and, in a book I wrote later, I gave it a name: “Hama Rules.”

Hama Rules are no rules at all. You do whatever it takes to stay in power and you don’t just defeat your foes. You bomb them in their homes and then you steamroll them so that their children and their children’s children will never forget and never even dream of challenging you again.

A Thai police chief said Wednesday that the Iranians who were “arrested after accidentally setting off explosives at their rented home in Bangkok were plotting to attack Israeli diplomats,” The Associated Press reports . A “sticky” bomb found at the blast site matched a device found on an Israeli embassy car in New Delhi, police said.

Tunisia’s defense minister, Abdelkrim Zbidi, has called for increased cooperation with the United States to help guard his country’s borders. Mr. Zbidi spoke Wednesday after a meeting of a joint Tunisian-American military commission that discussed increased training and logistical support for the North African nation’s forces. Tunisian troops have recently clashed with fighters linked to militants in neighboring Libya. There also have been skirmishes with groups believed to have ties to fighters for Al Qaeda who are active in the desert south of Tunisia.

Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping has called for deeper “strategic trust” in a speech to business leaders, on the second full day of his US visit.

Both countries should act to “reduce misunderstandings and suspicion” via closer communication, he said.

Earlier, he met congressional leaders from the Senate and House of Representatives on Capitol Hill.

Mr Xi is now travelling to Iowa, a state he visited on an earlier trip in 1985, before moving on to California.

Correspondents say his visit is offering the US a glimpse at the style of the man tipped to be China’s next leader.

Armored vehicles patrolled Bahrain ’s capital, Manama, on Tuesday in a security clampdown to deter protesters after overnight clashes outside the city on the first anniversary of a forcibly suppressed pro-democracy uprising. Youths threw gasoline bombs at police cars during skirmishes before dawn, prompting the authorities to send police reinforcements backed by helicopters into Shiite villages around Manama. The police fired tear gas at two dozen protesters near the former Pearl Roundabout, the focal point of last year’s protests, nearly hitting several people as canisters bounced off cars.

About 30 people were arrested, some of them dragged from their cars apparently on suspicion of being protesters aiming to block the highway near the roundabout. The prominent activist Nabeel Rajab, who led the protesters, was detained, as were six American activists in the country as part of a Witness Bahrain group to monitor how the police handle demonstrators. The government said in a statement that it would deport the Americans. Shiites, who were active in last year’s protests, have expressed anger that they are treated as second-class citizens and that they are shut out of many state jobs under the Sunni ruling family.

Urging nations to draw “red lines against Iranian aggression,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that the arrest of Iranians in Bangkok after a suspicious explosion and bombing attempts on Israeli diplomatic personnel in India and Georgia have exposed Iran ’s “acts of terror” to the world.

“These days, Iran’s acts of terror are clear to everyone,” he told Parliament. “Iran is disrupting world stability and hurting innocent diplomats in many countries. Countries around the world must condemn Iran’s terror operations and draw red lines against Iranian aggression. If not stopped, this aggression will spread to many countries.”

Israel has blamed Iran for two car bomb attacks targeting its diplomats on Monday, one in New Delhi which seriously injured an Israeli woman and three other people, and the second in Tblisi, the capital of Georgia, which was defused by police there after a local Israeli Embassy employee reported a noise under his car.

An explosion in Bangkok on Tuesday led authorities there to two Iranians who were arrested on suspicion that they were on their way to try to attack Israeli diplomats. One of the men lost at least one leg from the explosion. Israeli officials said the explosive device in Thailand was similar to those used in India and Georgia.

Iranian officials have rejected those accusations, saying that Israel is trying to besmirch Tehran, and Thai officials said it was too early to link what they found to what had occurred elsewhere.

In Iran, state television reported advances in its nuclear program on Wednesday. Iran says the program is for civilian use. Israel and most of the West believes the goal is to build nuclear weapons and Israeli is especially worried. It has been pressing the world to make sure Iran does not build such a weapon, threatening a military strike if all else fails.