[Clancy:] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to YOUR WORLD TODAY, here on CNN International. I'm Jim Clancy.
[Verjee:] And I'm Zain Verjee. Here are some of the top stories we're following. About 100 Iraqi insurgents stormed a police station north of Baghdad, killing at least 18 officers and wounding four others. Some 30 detainees were freed in the assault, and about a dozen vehicles destroyed. Eleven insurgents approximately were killed. U.S. President George W. Bush says his administration will encourage Iraqi leaders to reach out across sectarian lines to form a national unity government.
[Clancy:] A high-speed chase in Israel ended with the arrest of ten Palestinians. Police say those men were in a van. Along with them, five kilograms of explosives. It was on the road well traveled, the main highway, Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The arrest coming just after a terror alert issued, when a would-be suicide bomber allegedly entered from the West Bank.
[Verjee:] Some new pictures now we're getting out of France, where thousands of students march through Paris this day. It was the latest in a series of demonstrations against France's new job laws. That law essentially makes it easier for employers to hire and then fire younger workers. On Monday, students met with Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who is signaling that he may be willing to compromise.
[Clancy:] There are new developments involving an investigation into an incident in the Iraqi city of Haditha last November. American forces are alleged to have attacked two Iraqi families after a marine was killed by a roadside bomb. Barbara Starr has been following this story from the Pentagon. Barbara, what's new in the case now?
[Barbara Starr, Cnn Pentagon Correspondent:] Well, we'll get to that in just a minute, Jim. There is some video that is emerging. But let's just recount for our viewers where things stand. It was November 19th of last year in Haditha. Marines on patrol came under attack. There was an IED, they said. And they said that 15 Iraqi civilians at the time were killed in this roadside blast. But there are now allegations that that is not what happened, that there was small arms fire after the roadside blast, marines moved towards two or three houses near the road, there was an exchange of gun fire, and that the 15 civilians, Iraqis, were killed in that exchange of gunfire. We're going to show some video now that is potentially very disturbing to viewers. It was taken by an Iraqi human rights unit, a journalism student that worked with them at the time. This is purported, indeed, Jim, to be the aftermath of this attack in Haditha. Some of it simply too graphic to show. CNN has not independently confirmed that this video is what the human rights organization says it is, but many news agencies now showing it, that it is believed to be tied, perhaps, to this attack. What has happened, of course, is the U.S. military has opened a criminal investigation, into what happened here, trying to determine how 15 Iraqi civilians died, apparently, some of them with very close range wounds. Whether there was any criminal violations of the uniform code of military justice, whether U.S. troops acted in accordance with the rules of engagement, or whether something else transpired here Jim.
[Clancy:] All right, Barbara, let's back up even a little bit further. Now, were any marines killed or injured in what they say was an IED attack? I mean, is this considered to be taking revenge out on civilians? Is that what's being alleged by some?
[Starr:] Well, let's be clear. Indeed, one U.S. marine was killed in the initial IED blast. A number of insurgents, people identified to be insurgents, also killed and wounded. But let's also be clear, Jim, when all the dust settled, some of the Iraqi civilians that were killed were very small children and women, people not of military age, not serving in the military. Now, the question on the table is going to be whether there was a willful violation of the rules of engagement, if you will, whether the U.S. troops opened up on the civilians knowing that they were civilians, or whether there was some incident, perhaps, that could be construed as fog of war or confusion. They were taking small arms fire, they said, from a house after the roadside blast, as they tried to suppress that arms fire, did they inadvertently wound civilians? Of course, one of the great challenges in Iraq is insurgents often virtually hide in plain sight, in villages, in farmhouses with their own families, with women and children, and it becomes a very difficult proposition. However, what is really troubling to the U.S. military here is the original report from the marines at the time was that 15 civilians died in a roadside blast. Now, they had a tip, they conducted an initial investigation, and they have now moved to a criminal investigation on the basis that the information they had in the weeks following that incident simply did not match what the marines originally reported Jim.
[Clancy:] All right, Barbara Starr with the latest there. And Barbara, we thank you, as always.
[Velshi:] A jury found an army dog handler guilty on Tuesday of abusing detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison by terrifying them with a military dog, allegedly for his own amusement. Sergeant Michael J. Smith was found guilty of six of 13 counts. The military jury deliberated for about 18 hours over three days before announcing this verdict. He still faces a sentencing hearing. Disturbing photos of dogs barking and growling at inmates was seen around the world in the abuse scandal, and that hurt Washington's efforts to win support for the war.
[Clancy:] Well, this week, we've really have been taking a close look at Iraq. And it's all over in the news, because this begins the fourth year of the U.S. presence there. But there's another story today that I think is just as important. You have to look back on what it means. The U.S. assault on Afghanistan began in 2001. That was, of course, following the September 11th attacks that were plotted in Afghanistan, those attacks on Washington and New York.
[Verjee:] And the main purpose, really, was to drive out the ruling Taliban, which had provided safe harbor for Osama bin Laden. But as Mike Chinoy reports, the Taliban appears to be making a resurgence, if not thriving, just across the border in the Waziristan region of Pakistan.
[Mike Chinoy, Cnn Correspondent:] The Taliban appeared to have taken effective control of much of the rugged Pakistani tribal area called Waziristan. And this is the result: a brutal system America went to war in Afghanistan to destroy, recreated just across the border in Pakistan. These men executed, their bodies dragged through the streets, a chilling scene the Taliban claims recorded by their own cameraman. Journalist Ahmed Rashid wrote the definitive book on the Taliban.
[Ahmed Rashid, Author, "taliban":] It's very similar to what has been going on, or what was going on, in the early period of the Taliban rule in Afghanistan. They are hanging people and torturing people who they consider as un-Islamic or who they consider as brigans or bandits. They are posing imposing very strict rules on women. There have been some areas where TVs have been burned or broken.
[Chinoy:] And in a video, as slickly produced as it is gruesome, flaunting their brutality, verses from the Koran superimposed on dangling corpses. "The fate of unbelievers," the narrator intones, "Jihad against bandits. Alla punishes the oppressors."
[Samina Ahmed, International Crisis Group:] Judging on this documentary that they've made, they're boasting about what they have done. It seems like they have fairly comfortable positions, that they are they don't feel threatened. That they are pretty much in control.
[Chinoy:] Reinforcing that impression, the video was shot not in some remote mountain hideout, but in Waziristan's main town, Miran Shah. And it chose events which it says occurred just in the last couple of months.
[Rashid:] They are eliminating any tribesmen or tribal chiefs who are allied to the government. Something like 100 tribal chiefs, or maliqs as we call them, have been assassinated in the past one year alone.
[Chinoy:] So pervasive is the Taliban's grip that 70,000 Pakistani troops have been unable to dislodge them, despite fierce battles like this. Instead, the army's campaign has alienated many locals, mainly Pushtun tribes who practice an extremely conservative form of Islam, and have long resisted the authority of the government in Islamabad. The result, growing support for the Taliban and for Osama bin Laden, who is widely believed to be hiding in the region.
[Rashid:] There has been an enormous radicalization, and extremism has become very popular there. Clearly, bin Laden has a very sympathetic base in which to hide and which to operate from.
[Chinoy:] One consequence, Waziristan has become an increasingly important base for launching attacks against U.S. and Afghan government forces across the border in Afghanistan.
[Rashid:] I think it's very important as a base, because you have there, not just after Afghan Taliban, but you have Arabs, central Asians, Chechens, Africans, the kind of same groups of people that you had in Afghanistan before 911.
[Chinoy:] So concerned is the Afghan government become that President Hamid Karzai has publicly denounced Pakistan for failing to reign in the jihadis, even presenting Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf with a list of alleged terrorists said to be hiding on the Pakistani side of the border. The accusation infuriated Musharraf, and has generated a bitter public quarrel between the two most important U.S. allies in the war on terror.
[Pervez Musharraf, Pakistani President:] I'm totally disappointed with their intelligence, and I feel there is a very, very deliberate attempt to malign Pakistan by some agents, and President Karzai is totally oblivious of what is happening in his own country.
[Chinoy:] Indeed, the Taliban's video underscores the fact that the situation appears to be getting worse. In the bazaar in Miran Shah, crowds gawk as the bodies of men hanged as criminals, some accused of possessing pornographic material, others of drinking alcohol. While the narrator declares, after you see this video, maybe you will feel more support for the cause of jihad. Mike Chinoy, CNN, Islamabad.
[Verjee:] Pakistan could come under more pressure to reign in militants as NATO expands its peacekeeping operation into southern Afghanistan. That's just across the border. NATO Secretary-General Jaap De Hoop Scheffer is in Washington for a round of meetings on that mission and more. He joins us now from our bureau in the U.S. capital. Thanks so much for being with us. To what extent is the Taliban insurgency growing or making a comeback in Afghanistan? What is NATO's assessment?
[Jaap De Hoop Scheffer, Nato Secy.-general:] Well, it is certainly true, that when they saw the Taliban and other spoilers of the process, Democratic process in Afghanistan, when they saw and realized that NATO was expanding into the southern provinces, they have tried to influence the debate in Europe, and they have tried to with attacks to prevent NATO from coming in. But imagine what would happen if NATO would not do what it's now doing, and imagine what the fate of Afghanistan would be. In other words, NATO is expanding its mission into the southern provinces, and NATO will do what is necessary to win the hearts and minds of the people and to make reconstruction possible and to extend the authority of the central government.
[Verjee:] The U.S. administration has a proposal essentially saying, you know, turn over the U.S. troops command to NATO by some time early next year. And it's raising questions about NATO, because NATO's role in Afghanistan has mainly been peacekeeping and not combat. And the question is, will NATO be able to engage the Taliban as aggressively as the U.S. forces did?
[De Hoop Scheffer:] Well, NATO is leading a stabilization mission. NATO is involved in reconstruction as well. There's a big but here. If the spoilers, if the Taliban or others would go for NATO as a target, the way we are coming into the south is so robust that they should be under no illusion that when NATO comes in, it will all become different. NATO is there on the basis of a robust set of rules of engagement...
[Verjee:] So NATO would fight aggressively, NATO would engage in combat if it came to that?
[De Hoop Scheffer:] The NATO mission is not primarily a counterterrorism issue, but I can assure you, if there are spoilers in the process, NATO will know the way how to act.
[Verjee:] President Bush praised NATO for its training mission in Iraq, saying that it's empowering Iraqi forces. What is your assessment of Iraqi troops. When do you think they will be able to take over security in Iraq?
[De Hoop Scheffer:] Well, that's hard to say. I've been there a number of times. And speaking for the NATO training mission, which is the biggest priority of the Iraqi government, I can say that we are doing well. I would like to see the training mission expand with some other courses, but NATO is training the Iraqi armed forces, are happy about what NATO is doing, and we'll certainly go on with this important mission. Because it's up to the Iraqis to take their fate into their own hands, and if NATO can participate in making that happen, I think that's a plus for Iraqis and Iraqi people.
[Verjee:] President Bush wants NATO to make something else happen. He wants NATO to take the lead in the situation of the western region of Sudan, in Darfur. NATO is expectedly playing more of a supportive role in the capacity for the African Union. Will NATO take a lead?
[De Hoop Scheffer:] What is important, is when we discuss the pillage, and the rape and the violence, mass murder in Darfur, it's that the African Union, which is now running the mission, decides, has decided, in fact, to transfer the mission to the U.N., the United Nations. That means that Security Council resolution should be accepted in New York on the basis of which a U.N. force could come in.
[Verjee:] Will NATO put troops on the ground?
[De Hoop Scheffer:] NATO will not put troops on the ground. But I do exclude that NATO allies, individual allies, will participate in a U.N. mission.
[Verjee:] Why wouldn't NATO put troops on the ground? Because if there's ever a opportunity to step up and protect you know, up to 200,000 people who have been killed. More than two million people have been displaced, and if the U.S. has called what's going on there genocide, isn't this the exact kind of mission that NATO should step up to and put boots on the ground?
[De Hoop Scheffer:] It is a mission that is now going to be taken over by the United Nations. And if the U.N. or the African Union comes to NATO and asks NATO to support that mission, NATO will support. But I do not see and consider it feasible to have a NATO force on the ground. It will be a U.N. force. That is what the African Union has decided. That is what having the support of the international community. NATO will enable, NATO will support the African Union or the U.N. if the question comes to NATO's place, but the NATO alliance as such will not put a force on the ground in Darfur.
[Verjee:] NATO Secretary-General Jaap De Hoop Scheffer, speaking to us this day from Washington D.C. Thanks so much for being with us.
[De Hoop Scheffer:] Thank you.
[Clancy:] We've got to take a break.
[Verjee:] Still ahead right here on
[Your World Today:] The calendar, the last time I looked, Jim, said it's spring, but the conditions on the ground say something else.
[Clancy:] Scraping out after the storms. The U.S. experiences some rather rough weather. We're going to tell you all about that, coming up next.