Saturday, Mar 14th
Last update08:01:37 AM GMT
War Glance
Afghanistan is expected to sign a formal agreement with the United Nations on Sunday to stop the recruitment of children into its police forces and ban the common practice of boys being used as sex slaves by military commanders, according to Afghan and United Nations officials.
The effort by Afghanistan’s international backers to rapidly expand the country’s police and military forces has had the unintended consequence of drawing many under-age boys into service, the officials conceded.
A car bomb ripped through a funeral tent in a mainly Shiite area of Baghdad on Thursday, the deadliest in a series of attacks that killed at least 40 people.
The blasts were the latest in more than a week of bombings that have killed more than 200 people, raising concerns about an uptick in violence as the U.S. military prepares to withdraw from the country.
The number of U.S. troops killed by roadside bombs in Afghanistan soared by 60 percent last year, while the number of those wounded almost tripled, new U.S. military statistics show.
All told, 268 U.S. troops were killed by the improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, in 2010, about as many as in the three previous years combined, according to the figures, obtained by The Washington Post. More than 3,360 troops were injured, an increase of 178 percent over the year before.
ALASTAIR Campbell heaped further pressure on Tony Blair by admitting he and the former Prime Minister should face prosecution for war crimes if the invasion of Iraq is found to be illegal.
In a rare slip-up, the spin doctor confessed that if it was found to be unlawful, those who took the country into war “should be punished”. He then tried to squirm out of his comments, made during a debate on BBC1’s Question Time, insisting the war in 2003 was lawful.
Tony Blair today admitted to brushing aside warnings that invading Iraq would be unlawful and made clear his overriding priority, even at the expense of opposition and secrecy at home, was to maintain a close relationship with the US president.
In four hours of testimony to the Chilcot inquiry, ending with expressions of regret for lives lost that provoked jeers from relatives of the dead, Blair disclosed that he privately told George Bush he could "count on us" in helping get rid of Saddam Hussein, an aim, he said, for which his government should be "gung-ho".
Toany Blair insisted today that Britain had to give up the "wretched policy of apology" for the allies' action in Iraq. But he offered the Chilcot inquiry his regrets for the loss of life in Iraq. At his appearance before the inquiry last year he was heavily criticised for not answering a question about whether he regretted the invasion.
At the end of his evidence this afternoon he said it had never been his meaning. "Of course I regret deeply and profoundly the loss of life," he said. As he extended his regrets to British and allied troops and Iraqis, there were murmurs of "too late" from the public seating behind him.
Tony Blair was offered a way out of attacking Iraq at a secret meeting with his foreign secretary Jack Straw eight days before the invasion, according to documents lodged with the Chilcot inquiry, which tomorrow will question the former prime minister for a second time.
An anonymous official told the inquiry: "I recall a meeting with the prime minister where the foreign secretary [Straw] made the argument ... for the UK military not being involved.
Page 39 of 118
