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Along with Tibet, Xinjiang is one of the most politically sensitive regions in China. It is strategically located at the borders of Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, has abundant oil reserves and is China's largest natural gas-producing region.

Xinjiang has long been a tightly controlled hotbed of ethnic tensions, fostered by an economic gap between many Uighurs and Han Chinese, government controls on religion and culture and an influx of Han migrants who now are the majority in most key cities, including Urumqi. There were attacks in the region before and during last year's Summer Olympics in Beijing.

But controlling the anger on both sides of the ethnic divide will now make controlling Xinjiang, with its gas reserves and trade and energy ties to central Asia, all the more testing for the ruling Communist Party.

A secret Central Intelligence Agency initiative terminated by Director Leon Panetta was an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives, according to former intelligence officials familiar with the matter.

According to current and former government officials, the agency spent money on planning and possibly some training. It was acting on a 2001 presidential legal pronouncement, known as a finding, which authorized the CIA to pursue such efforts. The initiative hadn't become fully operational at the time Mr. Panetta ended it.

In 2001, the CIA also examined the subject of targeted assassinations of al Qaeda leaders, according to three former intelligence officials. It appears that those discussions tapered off within six months. It isn't clear whether they were an early part of the CIA initiative that Mr. Panetta stopped.

Obama administration officials said Friday they had no grounds to investigate the 2001 deaths of Taliban prisoners of war who human rights groups allege were killed by U.S.-backed forces. The mass deaths were brought up anew Friday in a report by The New York Times on its Web site. It quoted government and human rights officials accusing the Bush administration of failing to investigate the executions of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of prisoners.

U.S. officials said Friday they did not have legal grounds to investigate the deaths because only foreigners were involved and the alleged killings occurred in a foreign country. The Times cited U.S. military and CIA ties to Afghan Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, whom human rights groups accuse of ordering the killings. The newspaper said the Defense Department and FBI never fully investigated the incident.

Asked about the report, Marine Corps Col. David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said that since U.S. military forces were not involved in the killings, there is nothing the Defense Department could investigate. "There is no indication that U.S. military forces were there, or involved, or had any knowledge of this," Lapan said. "So there was not a full investigation conducted because there was no evidence that there was anything from a DoD (Department of Defense) perspective to investigate."

Riot police on Tuesday fired tear gas to try to break up rock-throwing Han and Uighur protesters who clashed in the capital of China's Muslim region of Xinjiang two days after bloody clashes killed 156 and wounded more than 1,000. Hundreds of protesters from China's predominant Han ethnic group, many clutching meat cleavers, metal pipes and wooden clubs, smashed shops owned by Uighurs, a Turkic largely Islamic people who share linguistic and cultural bonds with Central Asia.

Along with Tibet, Xinjiang is one of the most politically sensitive regions in China and in both places the government has sought to maintain its grip by controlling religious and cultural life while promising economic growth and prosperity.

Xinjiang has long been a hotbed of ethnic tensions, fostered by a yawning economic gap between Uighurs and Han Chinese, government controls on religion and culture and an influx of Han Chinese migrants who now are the majority in most key cities. Beijing has poured cash into exploiting Xinjiang's rich oil and gas deposits and consolidating its hold on a strategically vital frontierland that borders Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, but Uighurs say migrant Han are the main beneficiaries.

The United States' top fighter jet, the Lockheed Martin F-22, has recently required more than 30 hours of maintenance for every hour in the skies, pushing its hourly cost of flying to more than $44,000, a far higher figure than for the warplane it replaces, confidential Pentagon test results show

The aircraft's radar-absorbing metallic skin is the principal cause of its maintenance troubles, with unexpected shortcomings -- such as vulnerability to rain and other abrasion -- challenging Air Force and contractor technicians since the mid-1990s, according to Pentagon officials, internal documents and a former engineer.

While most aircraft fleets become easier and less costly to repair as they mature, key maintenance trends for the F-22 have been negative in recent years, and on average from October last year to this May, just 55 percent of the deployed F-22 fleet has been available to fulfill missions guarding U.S. airspace, the Defense Department acknowledged this week. The F-22 has never been flown over Iraq or Afghanistan.

US President Barack Obama has praised Russian PM Vladimir Putin at talks outside Moscow, saying there was an excellent chance to improve ties.

Mr Obama praised Mr Putin for his "extraordinary work" as president and PM as the pair met for the first time. Mr Putin said Mr Obama's own role would be key in improving relations.

Mr Obama said: "I am aware of not only the extraordinary work that you've done on behalf of the Russian people in your previous role as prime minis-, uh, as president, but in your current role as prime minister."

US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have reached an outline agreement to cut back their nations' stockpiles of nuclear weapons.The "joint understanding" signed in Moscow would see reductions of deployed nuclear warheads to below 1,700 each within seven years of a new treaty.

The accord would replace the 1991 Start I treaty, which expires in December.

Mr Obama said the two countries were both "committed to leaving behind the suspicion and the rivalry of the past".

The US and Russia have agreed to work towards cutting deployed nuclear warheads to as few as 1,500 each under an agreement signed by Barack Obama on his first trip to Russia as president.

Obama and the Russian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, signed a framework deal aimed at cutting warheads to a maximum of 1,675 within seven years of a nuclear arms reduction treaty coming into force.

Current treaties allow for a maximum of 2,200 warheads, though both sides are thought to have more than that deployed, or capable of launch. According to some expert estimates of current numbers, the new commitment would mean each side scrapping almost 1,000 warheads.

The current debate in the US on the "special interrogation methods" sanctioned by the Bush administration could soon reach Europe. It has long been clear that the CIA used the Szymany military airbase in Poland for extraordinary renditions. Now there is evidence of a secret prison nearby.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, also known as "the brains" behind al-Qaida. This was the man who had presented Osama bin Laden with plans to attack the US with commercial jets. He personally selected the pilots and supervised preparations for the attacks. Eighteen months later, on March 1, 2003, Sheikh Mohammed was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan by US Special Forces and brought to Afghanistan two days later. Now the CIA was flying him to a remote area in Poland's Masuria region. The prisoner slept during the flight from Kabul to Szymany, for the first time in days, as he later recounted:

A large number of Polish and American intelligence operatives have since gone on record that the CIA maintained a prison in northeastern Poland. Independent of these sources, Polish government officials from the Justice and Defense Ministry have also reported that the Americans had a secret base near Szymany airport. And so began on March 7, 2003 one of the darkest chapters of recent American -- and European -- history.

As the Taliban tightened their hold over newly won territory, Pakistani politicians and American officials on Thursday sharply questioned the government’s willingness to deal with the insurgents and the Pakistani military’s decision to remain on the sidelines.

Some 400 to 500 insurgents consolidated control of their new prize, a strategic district called Buner, just 70 miles from the capital, Islamabad, setting up checkpoints and negotiating a truce similar to the one that allowed the Taliban to impose Islamic law in the neighboring Swat Valley.

As they did, Taliban contingents were seen Thursday in at least two other districts and areas still closer to the capital, according to Pakistani government officials and residents.

One of the main stumbling blocks to talk with Iran has been the condition that Iran suspends its uranium enrichment. Now, the Obama administration may take that option off the table, at least for now.

The United States and its European allies, which have just invited Iran to a fresh round of nuclear talks, are coming to the realization that if Iran's nuclear program isn't quite at the point of no return, it will be soon. With 5,500 centrifuges, roughly enough for about two weapons worth of uranium a year, Iran isn't going to just shut down its enrichment facility as a goodwill gesture.

Iran maintains enriching uranium for nuclear energy is its right. Now the West seems to have come around to Iran's way of thinking. Last week during a speech on proliferation in Prague, Czech Republic, President Obama admitted as much when he said, "We will support Iran's right to peaceful nuclear energy with rigorous inspections."

For two hours, the meeting unfolded, laying bare the torments facing any Afghan Pashtuns who might be contemplating defying the Taliban — and the extraordinary difficulties facing American officers as they try to reverse the course of the war.

The meeting in Maidan Shahr, Wardak Province’s capital, tucked into the mountains about 30 miles southwest of Kabul, concerned one of the most unorthodox projects the Americans have undertaken here since the war began in 2001: to arm, with minimal training, groups of Afghan men to guard their own neighborhoods.

The military is borrowing a page from a similar program that helped bring about the recent calm to Iraq, where the Americans signed up more than 100,000 Iraqis, most of them Sunnis and many of them insurgents, to keep the peace.

I am quite aware that a distinction must be drawn between the American government and the American people. We do not hold Americans accountable for the faulty decisions of the Bush administration. They want to live in peace, like we all do.

The new US president, Barack Obama, directed a video address to the Iranian nation three weeks ago, during the Iranian New Year festival. Did you watch the speech? Ahmadinejad: Yes. Great things are happening in the United States. I believe that the Americans are in the process of initiating important developments.

We support talks on the basis of fairness and respect. That has always been our position. We are waiting for Obama to announce his plans, so that we can analyze them.

Most of today's leaders of NATO member states were not yet born when the Alliance was forged, and almost two decades after the Soviet Union's collapse, military analysts see the Alliance as mired in an identity crisis.

"It's entirely unclear what NATO's reason for existence is after 1989 [the year the Berlin Wall came down]," says Tarak Barkawi, senior lecturer in international security at Cambridge University's Center for International Studies.

"The Taliban does not accept defeat, so how can you win?" says Karl-Heinz Kamp, director of the research division for the NATO Defense College in Rome, which trains all ranking NATO officials and diplomats. "NATO might not be able to lose or win in a classic military way," he adds.

Netanyahu sent a similar message by appointing his longtime aid Uzi Arad to be national security advisor. Since 2007, Arad, reportedly because the Bush administration considered him a counterintelligence risk, has been denied a visa to come to the United States. You know Arad must have pushed some sensitive buttons to have ticked off an otherwise forgiving Bush administration.

The messages that Netanyahu and Lieberman have sent in the past 48 hours highlight a fast-evolving concern for the Obama administration: The new Israeli government has adopted a domestic and foreign policy almost entirely opposed to that of the United States.

And those policy differences center on three issues: Israeli domestic policy toward its Arab minority (which constitutes about 20 percent of Israel's population), Israel's intent to occupy the Palestinian West Bank and the Syrian Golan Heights indefinitely, and Israel's desire for the United States to militarily degrade Iran's industrial capability, in particular its nuclear program.

The chief of the Pakistani Taleban, Baitullah Mehsud, has told the BBC his group was behind Monday's deadly attack on a police academy in Lahore. He said the attack was "in retaliation for the continued drone strikes by the US in collaboration with Pakistan on our people".

Baitullah Mehsud said the attacks would continue "until the Pakistan government stops supporting the Americans".

Baitullah Mehsud is the supreme commander of the Tehrik-e-Taleban Pakistan group (Movement of Taleban in Pakistan). He operates out of a stronghold in the Pakistani tribal region of South Waziristan and the US state department recently issued a $5m (£3.5m) reward for his capture.

the Federally Administered Tribal Areas are not part of the North-West Frontier Province. The two are separate entities in almost every sense of the word. While the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) is, well, a province with an elected assembly, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are geographically separate areas governed through “political agents” who are appointed by the president and supported by the governor of NWFP (who is also a presidential appointee). Residents of NWFP technically live according to the laws drafted by the Parliament in Islamabad, while the only nontribal law applicable to residents of FATA is the Frontier Crimes Regulations, a colonial-era dictate sanctioning collective punishment for tribes and subtribes guilty of disrupting the peace. Within FATA, there are seven “agencies” and six “frontier regions.” The agencies are Bajaur, Mohmand, Khyber, Orakzai, Kurram, North Waziristan and South Waziristan; the somewhat more governed frontier regions (FRs) cling like barnacles to the eastern edge of FATA and include FR Peshawar, FR Kohat, FR Bannu, FR Lakki, FR Tank, and FR Dera Ismail Khan, each of them named after the “settled” districts they border.

All residents of FATA and the vast majority of those in NWFP are ethnically Pashtuns. Pashtuns also make up the majority in Baluchistan, the vast province bordering Iran and Afghanistan, which is named after the minority Baluch. Besides NWFP and Baluchistan, there are two other provinces in Pakistan; Punjab is populated mostly by ethnic Punjabis, and Sindh was historically dominated by Sindhis until millions of Muslims migrated from India at the time of Partition and settled in Sindhi cities such as Karachi and Hyderabad. Now, Sindh is composed of ethnic Sindhis and the descendents of these migrants, known as mohajirs.

Foreigners are prohibited from entering FATA without government permission. If you see a newspaper dateline from a town inside FATA, chances are that the Pakistani Army organized a field trip for reporters. Those traveling unaccompanied into, say, South Waziristan have either a death wish or a really good rapport with the Taliban, who effectively run North and South Waziristan and large portions of the other agencies and frontier regions.

Pakistan is "battling for its own survival", its president, Asif Ali Zardari, has told visiting US special envoy for Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke.

Mr Zardari said Pakistan needed "unconditional support" to fight terrorism and extremism.

Mr Holbrooke, the joint US envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Islamabad after talks with Afghan leaders in Kabul.

When President Barack Obama comes to London next week, he will find one great power missing at the world's summit table: Europe. Five of the 20 leaders at the G20 meeting will be Europeans, representing France, Germany, Britain, Italy and the EU, but the whole will be less than the sum of its parts. There will be plenty of Europeans but no Europe.

Obama's European trip, which continues to the Nato summit and then an EU-US meeting in Prague, will also be about foreign and security policy. Here, Europe is even less of a single player. To be fair, Europeans have got their act together on diplomacy with Iran, though it remains to be seen whether that European unity would survive an American request for more economic sanctions on Tehran. On most of the other big issues on Obama's agenda - Afghanistan, Pakistan, relations with Russia and China, nuclear proliferation - there is no Europe. There are individual European countries.

Unlike George W Bush at the beginning of his first term, President Obama is both ideologically and pragmatically predisposed to work with a stronger, more united Europe. But even he can't work with something that doesn't exist.

The bad news for Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, is that he now faces a much larger and potentially more troubling axis—an axis of upheaval.

The bad news for Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, is that he now faces a much larger and potentially more troubling axis—an axis of upheaval. This axis has at least nine members, and quite possibly more. What unites them is not so much their wicked intentions as their instability, which the global financial crisis only makes worse every day. Unfortunately, that same crisis is making it far from easy for the United States to respond to this new “grave and growing danger.”

When Bush’s speechwriters coined the phrase “axis of evil” (originally “axis of hatred”), they were drawing a parallel with the World War II alliance between Germany, Italy, and Japan, formalized in the Tripartite Pact of September 1940. The axis of upheaval, by contrast, is more reminiscent of the decade before the outbreak of World War II, when the Great Depression unleashed a wave of global political crises.