ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Syrian opposition activists say pro-government forces have killed at least 80 people in five days of fighting to recapture a rebel suburb of Damascus. In statements to the media Sunday, the activists said the forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad carried out the killings after entering the suburb of Jdaidet al-Fadl. They said pro-government patrols of the town were making it difficult to document the number of dead. An activist video posted on the Internet claimed to show several bodies of those killed covered in bags and laid out on the ground. Some appeared to have been executed with gunshot wounds to the head. There was no immediate response from the Syrian government to the accusation. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Syrian troops also have captured territory around the western rebel stronghold of Qusair, with the help of pro-government militia and Lebanese Hezbollah militants. It said the pro-Assad forces seized two villages on Saturday in t

Horacio Cartes won Paraguay's presidential election Sunday, succeeding former Roman Catholic bishop Fernando Lugo, who was impeached last year for poor performance. Cartes, a business magnate who made his fortune in banking and tobacco, has vowed to create jobs in a nation where nearly 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty level. Cartes' election marks a victory for the center-right Colorado Party over challenger Efrain Alegre's leftist Liberal Party, which previously controlled the government. Cartes took 46 percent of the vote to Alegre's 37 percent. The incoming president will face challenges such as repairing the ailing economy, creating jobs, and combating drug trafficking, smuggling and corruption. Liberal Federico Franco has led the landlocked, South American country since last June after Lugo was ousted from office.

South Korea's top diplomat cancelled an official trip to Tokyo this week after Japan's prime minister made donations and three cabinet officials prayed at a controversial military shrine, where some war criminals are honored. South Korean officials said Monday that Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se had planned to outline the direction of bilateral relations with Japan, but cancelled the trip in protest after three Japanese cabinet members prayed at the Yasukuni shrine in recent days. A Japanese government spokesman says Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did not visit the shrine but donated a ceremonial tree. The Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo honors Japan's war dead, including 14 wartime leaders convicted of war crimes after World War Two. Visits by government officials to Yasukuni remains irritant to Japan's Asian neighbors.

The Associated Press - The terror plot involved targeting British reserve troops using a toy-car packed with explosives. But investigators said Thursday Britain’s domestic spy agency of MI5 and police were able to stop Zahid Iqbal, Mohammed Sharfaraz Ahmed, Umar Arshad and Syed Farhan Hussain before they could launch the deadly attack. Iqbal and Ahmed were given extended sentences of 16 years and 3 months, which means they will be in jail for more than 11 years and put on parole for the rest of the time. Arshad was sentenced to more than six years in jail, while Hussain received more than five years. The British men - aged between 22 and 31 - pleaded guilty in March to engaging in conduct in preparation for acts of terrorism. The four were arrested a year ago in the town of Luton, north of London, after an operation by police and the MI5. Prosecutors said the Britons downloaded files containing instructions for an attack, bought survival equipment and collected money for terrorist pu

AFP,Seoul - North Korea offered talks Thursday with South Korea and the United States, but laid out pre-conditions that Seoul dismissed as “absurd” and analysts said would do little to reduce soaring tensions. The demands laid out by the North’s main military body included the withdrawal of UN sanctions and a permanent end to South Korea-US joint military drills. The offer followed a month of increasingly hostile exchanges between Pyongyang, Seoul and Washington that have included threats of nuclear war and precision missile strikes. The North’s conditions were swiftly rejected by South Korea which, together with the United States, has made any talks conditional on the North putting its nuclear weapons program on the table. “North Korea’s demands are totally incomprehensible. It’s absurd,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Tai-Young told reporters. Dialogue has become the new focus of the blistering rhetorical battle that has trapped the Korean peninsula in an escalating cycle of militar

Al Arabiya - A leaked video posted online shows Syrian government forces beating and torturing supposed Alawite officers, who have allegedly been accused of smuggling weapons to the Syrian opposition. The video clip uploaded by activists shows a reporter from the official Syrian TV channel present during the Syrian regime forces interrogation. Officers can be heard asking men, who have been placed in large metal containers, questions about their alleged involvement while slapping them repeatedly. The “officers from the Alawite sect” were blindfolded and handcuffed as portrayed in the online video. This video is one of many that have been leaked recently, showing Assad forces torturing unarmed civilians. It is impossible to verify the content and when the pictures were taken.

Germany on Thursday offered to keep 600-800 troops in Afghanistan for two years from 2015, after the end of NATO combat operations there, to help train and advise the national army in its battle against the Taliban. The offer comes with several conditions, including a formal request from the Afghan government, because “we want to be welcome” and a UN Security Council resolution, said Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere. It would also require a reasonable security situation and matching commitments by NATO allies in other parts of the country, he said, adding that he had informed major German parties of the plan that would require parliamentary approval. “The government is ready to offer, from 2015 and for initially two years, sending about 600 to 800 soldiers for expected training, advisory and support missions,” De Maiziere said at a press conference. “This offer is a declaration of intent by the federal government. Germany is taking an early and timely position on this important ques

Germany signed a bilateral assistance agreement with Afghanistan's Ministry of Interior on Wednesday to pledge its support to the Afghan security forces after 2014. Deputy head of mission of the German embassy in Kabul called on the Afghan government to take full responsibility for the training centers built by his country around Afghanistan. "We have built training centers for the police in many provinces. The government of Afghanistan should take responsibility for these centers and continue the process of training the police," said Oliver Owzca at an event in Kabul to sign the assistance agreement between the German police academy of Lübeck and Afghan interior ministry's police academy. The training chief of the MOI police academy Noorullah Zal said the pact is of great value to the Afghan forces. "We are signing an assistance agreement with Lübeck, one of the best academies in the world, to provide security and stability in our country and to have better