A battle plan to fight corruption in Afghanistan

Last update: November 20, 2009 - 8:32 PM

A BATTLE PLAN TO FIGHT CORRUPTION

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday that the United States could start holding Afghanistan's government accountable for corruption by withholding money for projects.

At a news conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Gates echoed a warning that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered privately to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan in Kabul earlier this week: That future civilian aid from the United States to Afghanistan would depend in part on how he tackled corruption and curbed cronyism.

In short, he said, "the place to start is the place where we have the greatest leverage, and that's where we're writing the checks."

big setback for blackwater case?

The Justice Department intends to drop manslaughter and weapons charges against one of five Blackwater Worldwide security guards involved in a deadly 2007 Baghdad shooting, prosecutors said in court documents Friday. A one-paragraph notice filed Friday says only that prosecutors have asked that the case against Nicholas Slatten of Sparta, Tenn., be dropped. The request could be a bad sign for the government. After the shootings, some guards spoke to investigators under the promise of immunity. Prosecutors have been arguing behind closed doors that the immunity deal did not taint the case. The judge is considering that issue now. Jury selection in the trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 25.

VIOLENCE ROUNDUP

A suspected U.S. missile strike killed at least eight militants in northwestern Pakistan, the second attack this week in the area.

A suicide bomber killed 16 people and wounded at least 23 in a busy Farah city square in western Afghanistan, while near Kabul a powerful former warlord narrowly escaped an assassination attempt.

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