That the situation is bad in Afghanistan is obvious. Quite how bad is open to debate following the 20-hour attack by insurgents on Kabul, though former Indian intelligence chief B. Raman put it rather succinctly on his Twitter feed @SORBONNE75. “If one considers totality of picture—anti-terror, anti-insurgency—- US far from prevailing in Afghanistan. US troops after 10 yrs in same position as Soviet troops after 8 yrs were in 1987—victory increasingly elusive.” Yet as has been the case for years, the United States has few good options in Afghanistan. Pulling out altogether would not only leave Afghanistan dealing with a bitter civil war but could further destabilise Pakistan.  Staying runs the risk of testing the patience not just of western public opinion but also of Afghans, who as the Afghanistan Analysts Network said, could come to see foreign forces as part of the problem rather than part of the solution.  ”The possible perception among Afghan residents that the presence of foreigners is a catalyst for attacks may lead to a growing conclusion that the problems related to their presence far outweigh the benefits,” it said. In the meantime, talks with the Afghan Taliban in order to try to reach a political settlement  appear to be going nowhere and are unlikely to become any easier after the attack on Kabul. Early indications are that the United States is determined to stay the course – U.S. ambassador to Kabul Ryan Crocker played down the attack - and concentrate on  negotiating an agreement allowing it to keep troops in Afghanistan well beyond the 2014 deadline it has set for handing over security to Afghan forces. Crocker also blamed the Pakistan-based Haqqani network for the attack while  U.S. General John Allen, the head of coalition forces in Afghanistan, said the United States would continue to try to convince Pakistan to rein in the militant group. In short, business as usual and indeed business as it has been for years, with the United States trying more or less to hold its ground in Afghanistan, while struggling to convince the Pakistan army to act against the militant proxies it once nurtured to counter India. That pressure is likely to be accompanied by a continued or intensified campaign of drone bomb attacks on militant targets in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) bordering Afghanistan. On the Pakistan side, there is as yet no obvious sign of a change of stance.  After a bitter fall-out following the raid by U.S. forces who found and killed Osama bin Laden on May 2, the United States and Pakistan have begun working together again – at least in targetting al Qaeda. The Pakistan army made a point of stressing “the intimate cooperation between Pakistan and United States intelligence agencies”  after the arrest in Quetta earlier this month of al Qaeda operative Younis al Mauritani. But that cooperation does not yet stretch to Pakistan turning on its former militant allies. The army says it is fighting on too many fronts already and must give priority to tackling the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other groups which threaten Pakistan rather than launching yet another military operation to clear out areas like North Waziristan, where the Haqqani network is based. The army’s reluctance to turn on its old militant allies, however, also stems from a deep-rooted psychological angst about Pakistan’s security.  Once these Islamist militant groups are gone, Pakistan will have no leverage left to defend itself against its much bigger neighbour India to the east, nor against an India-friendly Afghanistan to the west.  Traditionally, to a military mind, defence of borders equals national security – an idea that remained unchanged even after Pakistan acquired nuclear weapons. And nor would Pakistan have reliable proxies which it believes might help give it influence in Afghanistan. A report just produced outlining what the Pakistani establishment hopes to see in Afghanistan makes it clear that it still sees a role for both the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network in a political settlement in Afghanistan. It is in changing that psychological angst about Pakistan’s security that the United States has hoped to find its elusive solution. Yet there is no evidence that in the short-run Pakistan’s borders are going to become any more secure. On the Indian side, a slow-moving peace process is making slow but steady progress, helped in part by a focus on improving trade relations. But those gains are fragile, vulnerable to a major new attack on Indian territory, like the 2008 assault on Mumbai by Pakistan-based militants. They are also offset by growing tensions along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border with both countries accusing the other of failing to take firm enough action against militants operating on both sides.  One hope is that Pakistan will shift its focus eventually from external security to internal security – with a functioning democracy and better governance helping to deliver both political and economic security.  This internal security would in turn help it build better economic and trade ties with both Afghanistan and India, locking all three countries into the kind of economic inter-dependency that make it in their interests to retain friendly relations. But that will take very a long time. And as George Perkovich at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace argued in a report titled “Stop Enabling Pakistan’s Dangerous Dysfunction”, the very process of building democracy has often been undermined by the U.S. reliance on the Pakistan army as its main partner in fighting militants. (At its worst, that conundrum means that the U.S. presence in Afghanistan requires it to work most closely with the Pakistan army, thereby undermining a transition to democracy in Pakistan which could make it easier for the U.S. to leave Afghanistan.) There are not going to be any easy solutions to all this.  But the United States is not the Soviet Union. For all its financial troubles, the U.S. economy is in nowhere near the state of decay that the Soviet economy reached when the Russians pulled out of Afghanistan. And unlike the Soviet Union, the United States does not have a superpower actively campaigning against it, as Moscow did when the U.S. backed insurgents fighting the Soviet occupation.  Washington’s policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan might need some rethinking, but it seems to be determined to stay the course. In that sense, the Kabul attack changed very little.

BERLIN Oct 18 (Reuters) - Germany’s Angela Merkel expects European leaders to produce a “work plan” for Greece at a summit on Sunday, possibly including a permanent mission of international lenders to monitor its debts, sources from her party quoted her as saying on Tuesday.Euro zone leaders meet on Oct. 23 to discuss further aid for Greece, with countries such as Germany and the Netherlands frustrated by Athens’ lack of progress on privatisation and other reforms. Tighter controls are high on the agenda.Merkel told her Christian Democrats (CDU) the summit should find ways to ensure the euro zone rescue fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, is used effectively, but that leveraging it via the European Central Bank had been ruled out, party sources said.CDU sources present at a meeting with the Chancellor said she expected the summit to agree on sending countries that flout EU budget deficit rules to court, a move which could satisfy banks which have urged European policy makers to toughen their stance.Markets rallied last week on high hopes for the summit but Germany’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on Monday tempered expectations for the summit saying it would not produce a “miracle cure”.The euro fell for a second day against the dollar on Tuesday, pressured by weak German investor sentiment data, a warning on France’s triple-A credit rating and fading hopes of a comprehensive solution to the debt crisis.Schaeuble also said European governments would adopt a five-point strategy expected to include a plan to recapitalise banks and reduce Greece’s debt mountain by asking private creditors to accept steeper writedowns than the 21 percent losses agreed last July.The head of the Institute of International Finance bank lobby group held a meeting on Monday with Herman Van Rompuy, the EU official who organises summit meetings, to discuss bank recapitalisation and haircuts on Greek debt, an EU diplomat said on Tuesday.Greece’s overall debt is forecast to climb to 357 billion euros ($490 billion) this year, or 162 percent of annual economic output — a level economists agree is unsustainable.To reduce this mountain, euro zone leaders are racing to convince banks to accept “voluntary” writedowns of up to 50 percent on their sovereign holdings. At the same time, they are trying to agree on a blueprint for recapitalising financial institutions at risk from the deepening crisis.

BERLIN Oct 18 (Reuters) - Germany’s Angela Merkel expects European leaders to produce a “work plan” for Greece at a summit on Sunday, possibly including a permanent mission of international lenders to monitor its debts, sources from her party quoted her as saying on Tuesday.Euro zone leaders meet on Oct. 23 to discuss further aid for Greece, with countries such as Germany and the Netherlands frustrated by Athens’ lack of progress on privatisation and other reforms. Tighter controls are high on the agenda.Merkel told her Christian Democrats (CDU) the summit should find ways to ensure the euro zone rescue fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, is used effectively, but that leveraging it via the European Central Bank had been ruled out, party sources said.CDU sources present at a meeting with the Chancellor said she expected the summit to agree on sending countries that flout EU budget deficit rules to court, a move which could satisfy banks which have urged European policy makers to toughen their stance.Markets rallied last week on high hopes for the summit but Germany’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on Monday tempered expectations for the summit saying it would not produce a “miracle cure”.The euro fell for a second day against the dollar on Tuesday, pressured by weak German investor sentiment data, a warning on France’s triple-A credit rating and fading hopes of a comprehensive solution to the debt crisis.Schaeuble also said European governments would adopt a five-point strategy expected to include a plan to recapitalise banks and reduce Greece’s debt mountain by asking private creditors to accept steeper writedowns than the 21 percent losses agreed last July.The head of the Institute of International Finance bank lobby group held a meeting on Monday with Herman Van Rompuy, the EU official who organises summit meetings, to discuss bank recapitalisation and haircuts on Greek debt, an EU diplomat said on Tuesday.Greece’s overall debt is forecast to climb to 357 billion euros ($490 billion) this year, or 162 percent of annual economic output — a level economists agree is unsustainable.To reduce this mountain, euro zone leaders are racing to convince banks to accept “voluntary” writedowns of up to 50 percent on their sovereign holdings. At the same time, they are trying to agree on a blueprint for recapitalising financial institutions at risk from the deepening crisis.

“We are now going to start negotiations for investment with the Japanese government, and if we succeed, the rehabilitation could start within one year,” he said.Some of the funding could also come from Japan’s private sector, he said.Repairing the port, which was damaged by a cyclone in 2001, would return it to its original capacity of 400,000 containers a year, or roughly double its current capacity, Nala said.Mozambique is pushing to build more infrastructure to support the rapid rise in coal production in its Tete province.The southern African country is seen as a new supply source for coking coal, and has attracted global miners such as Vale , and steel makers such as Nippon Steel Corp .Nippon Steel, the world’s No.4 steel maker, has said it expects to start producing coking coal in Mozambique in 2014, with development of the site expected to begin in the first half of 2012.

The European banks were Barclays Bank Plc, BNP Paribas , Credit Suisse Group AG , Deutsche Bank AG and Societe GeneraleFitch said it expects to resolve the ratings watch within a short time and to take corresponding rating actions where warranted.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - When rock stars die, any trinket connected to their history soars in value. And certainly, Steve Jobs was the tech equivalent of a John Lennon or Jimi Hendrix.But the death of the Apple co-founder last week had no such effect on Apple collectibles, from still-working 1980s computers to floppy disc sets (see link.reuters.com/jac44s for more info).Instead, the flood of media coverage has spawned a tsunami of iJunk with very few takers, while prices for bona-fide Apple treasures have remained pretty much where they stood a month ago.The big losers: “Steve Jobs Apple R.I.P.” t-shirts, which have flat-lined sales-wise even though they are available on eBay in 15 colors and sizes from S to XXL at the most un-Apple-like price point of $7.98 plus $4.98 shipping.Nor did hyperbole help; Jobs shirts with the tag “iGod” proved downright mortal, with little sales action. And what would Jobs, an innovator in minimalist design, think of the cheesy-looking bobbleheads of him at $44.99?On the vintage side, auction bays generated scarcely more heat. An Apple 2e from 1982, complete with original green-screen monitor, had fielded just one bid at $50. Maybe the missing “delete” key had something to do with it.A “Macintosh” poster with Picasso-like line graphics, made to promote the first Mac in 1984, is still up grabs for $500.One seller from Mount Vernon, New York, sought a starting bid of $1,500 for a still-working Apple Lisa computer from 1984, with a Buy It Now price of $4,000. As of Tuesday afternoon, that price had dropped 25 percent, to $3,000.Tom Slater, director of Americana auctions at Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas, said the future price of any Jobs-related collectibles will depend more on its condition than any correlation to his death.”If you have a newspaper with a cover story about the sinking of the Titanic that’s separating along fold lines and crumbles to the touch, it would not have much value,” Slater said. “But a copy in nice condition would be very collectible.”Obscurity also helps, though the Apple trinket in and of itself must have collector’s cache.So the only known wiring harness from Jobs’ first Apple office, as an example, might not fetch much: Who cares? But a computer from Apple’s infancy that’s out-of-the-box new and still working? Now you’re talking, especially if you have all the instruction manuals and shipping trinkets (giveaway stickers, for example) that collectors call “case candy.”Which brings us back to that Lisa computer on eBay, coveted by Apple collectors such as Mikki Barry not just because of its rarity but because Lisa was also the name of Jobs’ oldest daughter.”Steve gave it such a personal name, from his daughter Lisa,” said Barry, director of contracts at SNVC, an IT solutions firm in Fairfax, Virginia.”It was amusing that Apple reverse-engineered the name into ‘Local Integrated Software Architecture,’” she added, noting it spawned some cheeky parodies, including “Let’s Invent Some Acronym” and ‘Lisa: Invented Stupid Acronym.”Barry didn’t set out to become an Apple collector when she started buying machines such as the PowerBook Duo or Apple’s Xserve. But she didn’t get rid of them either, and today owns about a dozen, including a 20th anniversary Mac from 1997 that still runs and connects to the Internet.”We were so Mac crazy that I co-founded the first commercial Internet applications company on the Mac platform, InterCon Systems Corp. in 1988,” Barry said proudly. She partnered with her ex-husband on that project, proving that Apple love transcends the plain old interpersonal kind.While others might see junky old machines, Barry and her ilk see the first expressions of a tech pioneer and one who carried himself more like an artist.So yes, that Lisa looks tempting but Barry plans to hold off. As she sums it, the Jobs philosophy of mixing tech, art and play — which devotees call “The Apple Way” — so far appears untouched by his passing.And that, she says, is where the real value lies.”There is no need to rush out and buy more collectibles,” she says, “because Apple will keep making better and better toys.”