Zimbabwe PM in US to restore aid

Zimbabwe PM in US to restore aid
Zimbabwean PM Morgan Tsvangirai held high level meetings with the IMF, the World Bank and US Secretary of State to restore aid for his troubled country.

Tsvangirai says he is not walking around with a begging bowl in his hands, but is trying to re-establish ways and means of re-engaging with the West.

But no aid money is going to Zimbabwe anytime soon, as long as there are no reforms. The best Tsvangirai can do now is to plead for aid to speed up constitutional reforms to allow the country to have free and fair elections, Economist Luke Zunga said on Thursday after Tsvangirai held talks with the IMF and the World Bank.

No details of his talks with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have been released.

In his meeting with the US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday, both discussed the prospects for restoring substantial US aid to the troubled country.

"I'm anxious to hear about the plans and the work that your government is undertaking and to look for ways that we appropriately can be supportive," Clinton told Tsvangirai.

The US has not yet committed whether it will offer developmental aid to Zimbabwe. US officials say the country's democratic and economic reforms must be enacted before aid is restored.

Tsvangirai is due to meet with President Barack Obama on Friday on his first official trip abroad that is to include meetings in Europe with British, French, German and other leaders in his quest for support for reconstruction of his economically battered land.

US senator rejects Cheney torture claim as 'lie'

A US senator says claims by former Vice President Dick Cheney that enhanced interrogation techniques -- torture -- saved countless American lives are wrong.

The powerful chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Carl Levin, said an investigation into detainee abuse charges over the use of the tactics "gives the lie to Mr. Cheney's claims," CNN reported.

In April, President Barack Obama released classified CIA memos that showed Bush administration lawyers authorized the use of techniques such as waterboarding, which stimulates drowning, against enemy combatants.

Later, Obama banned the use of the techniques.

Levin noted that the two CIA documents that Cheney wants released "say nothing about numbers of lives saved, nor do the documents connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of abusive techniques."

"I hope that the documents are declassified, so that people can judge for themselves what fact is, and what is fiction," he added.

Cheney had asked the Obama administration to declassify the documents to make more "honest debate" on the Bush administration's decision to use the methods on suspected terrorists, but his request was rejected by the CIA.

Cheney argued that those techniques provided valuable intelligence that saved American lives, but critics say they amounted to the illegal torture of prisoners in US custody.

NATO standing between US-Russia ties: Putin

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says NATO military exercises in Georgia could impede attempts by Washington and Moscow to "reset" their strained relations.

In an interview ahead of a trip to Tokyo, Putin said that the NATO exercise was "a step backwards" and a "signal in the other direction" despite efforts to repair US-Russia relations, Reuters reported.

"We really hope that today's leaders of the United States will hit the pedal properly to put a brake on the negative trends in our ... ties and take the necessary steps to make sure they really gain new substance," Putin said.

Russia has questioned the timing of the exercises when tension in the Caucasus is on the rise.

Putin also criticized the NATO war games, saying they will prop up the pro-Western Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.

President Saakashvili, who is detested by Moscow after igniting and fighting a war against Russia in August 2008, in recent weeks has faced major protests from the opposition who want him to resign.

The NATO exercise is the latest in a series of obstacles standing the way of better US-Russia relations. The two sides remain at odds over Washington's plans to deploy elements of an anti-missile shield in Eastern Europe.

The Kremlin views the move as a threat to its sovereignty, while the White House says the deployment is mere precaution against possible missile attack from 'rogue states'.

In March, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton handed a 'reset button' as a gift to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in move viewed a first step in betterment of relations between the Cold War-era rivals.

Following the move Moscow and Washington decided to reduce their nuclear warheads and work together on a number of issues.