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U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari have agreed not to let recent WikiLeaks revelations "cast a shadow on the strategic partnership" between their countries, a spokesman for the president said.

The two officials spoke over the telephone about bilateral matters with
reference to the recent leaks of U.S. diplomatic cables, the spokesman said. WikiLeaks is a website known for leaking official secrets.
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CNN speaks to a spokeswoman for the Pakistan People's Party about the safety of the country's nuclear arsenal.

CNN speaks to Pakistan's ambassador to Britain about the latest WikiLeaks release.

The U.S. Treasury Department is forbidding Americans from engaging in transactions with three high-ranking militants in "Pakistani-based terrorist organizations."

The department on Thursday designated two members of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi - senior leader Amanullah Afridi and chief operational commander Mati ur-Rehman - for acting for or on behalf of that group and al Qaeda.

The designations also freeze any assets the designees have under U.S.
jurisdiction.
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NATO's command in Afghanistan is "reviewing the circumstances" of the death three days ago of a former official in a southern Afghan province.

Haji Abraham, the former district chief of Gereshk District in Helmand province, was killed Monday.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force and Afghan troops were attempting to capture Taliban insurgents when "a joint security force" shot and killed Abraham, an ISAF statement said Thursday.

At the time, ISAF said, he "demonstrated hostile intent by brandishing a hand-grenade."
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An Afghan minority group apparently emerged as a stronger force in the country's legislature, a politically sensitive result in polls badly blemished by fraud and security problems.

The Hazaras, a minority Shiite community, gained 59 of 249 parliamentary seats in the recently-certified elections, a U.S. diplomat told CNN. That's a much larger percentage than their numbers - which the CIA World Factbook says is 9 percent of a 29 million-plus population.

The result raises concern among Western and Afghan officials that security problems could worsen over imbalances in the U.S.-backed government's tribal and ethnic presence. And the stakes are high for the Obama administration, which is seeking stability in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, regarded as the central front in the war on terror.
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A British aid worker who died during a failed rescue attempt in Afghanistan was killed by a U.S. grenade, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Thursday.

Linda Norgrove was killed early in October after being kidnapped in a remote region of Afghanistan.

Initial reports said she was killed when one of her kidnappers detonated a suicide vest, but the U.S. military quickly retracted that assertion and ordered an investigation into her death.

U.S. troops originally failed to admit that a grenade had been thrown during the rescue operation by American special forces, Hague said.
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On the record, Pakistan has persistently criticized the United States' use of unmanned drones to attack militant hideouts in its mountainous border region.

But diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks reveal that in private the Pakistani government was not unhappy about the strikes, and secretly allowed small groups of U.S. special operation units to operate on its soil.

In a cable sent in August 2008, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan at the time, Anne W. Patterson, recounted a meeting with Interior Minister Rehman Malik and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani. It coincided with a military operation in one of the restive frontier territories.

Patterson wrote: "Malik suggested we hold off alleged Predator attacks until after the Bajaur operation. The PM brushed aside Rehman's remarks and said, 'I don't care if they do it as long as they get the right people. We'll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it.'"

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The early and pre-trial release of prisoners by the Afghan government, at times with the intervention of the country's president, has frustrated U.S. officials, diplomatic documents released by WikiLeaks reveal.

In one case, Afghan President Hamid Karzai used his authority to pardon
five border police officers who were caught with 124 kilograms of heroin in
their police vehicle, according to an August 2009 State Department cable
published by WikiLeaks.

The policemen, known as the Zahir Five, were tried and convicted at the
Central Narcotics Tribunal, and sentenced to serve prison terms of 16 to 18
years each. But Karzai pardoned them, "on the grounds that they were distantly related to two individuals who had been martyred during the civil war."
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A gunman in an Afghan Border Police uniform who killed six U.S. troops was a reliable officer who had been with the force for three years, a senior official said Wednesday.

But the Taliban claimed that Hezatullah had been a member of the militant group who joined the border police precisely to launch an attack on U.S. forces.

Six U.S. troops died Monday when a gunman opened fired on NATO-led service members, the Pentagon said.

Hezatullah, a 23-year-old who goes by one name, was a trusted member of the border police and had been receiving training from coalition forces, said Aminullah Amarkhil, commander of the border police in eastern Nangarhar province.

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Wednesday's hearing will be held at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington.

UPDATE: Attorneys for Staff Sgt. Robert Stevens Wednesday entered guilty pleas
for him on four of five counts at his court martial on charges of serious
misconduct in Afghanistan.

The first court-martial of one of the soldiers connected to a group of soldiers accused of killing Afghan citizens for sport, is scheduled to start Wednesday.

Staff Sgt. Robert G. Stevens is one of seven soldiers "facing charges of serious misconduct while deployed in Afghanistan," the Army said in a statement.

Stevens' charges include conspiracy to commit assault and battery, dereliction of duty, aggravated assault and wrongfully and wantonly engaging in conduct likely to cause death or bodily harm to other soldiers, the Army said.

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As the United States negotiated with countries around the world to find new homes for the remaining detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Kuwait's minister of interior had a solution for the four Kuwaiti citizens left in the prison.

"You picked them up in Afghanistan; you should drop them off in Afghanistan," Shaikh Jaber Al-Khalid Al-Sabah is quoted as saying, "in the middle of the war zone," where the detainees could be killed in combat.

The 2009 cable titled "The Interior Minister's remedy for terrorists: Let them die," is among the diplomatic documents posted online by WikiLeaks.

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Incidents similar to this week's fatal shooting of six U.S. troops should not overshadow the progress American forces have made in turning security over to the Afghans, NATO's supreme commander says.

The six were shot Monday by a gunman wearing an Afghan Border Police uniform.

Last summer, two U.S. civilians and an Afghan soldier were reported shot to death by another Afghan soldier. A "rogue" Afghan policeman was blamed for the November 2009 shootings deaths of five British troops in Helmand province.

"Afghanistan is going to be a roller coaster," Adm. James Stavridis, NATO's supreme commander, said Monday. "We're going to see ups and downs. I see gradual, steady progress in Afghanistan, and I remain cautiously optimistic that we're going to succeed in Afghanistan. And I think one of the keys is transition. It is turning security over to the Afghans themselves."
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In 2008, David Rohde was kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan. He was held for seven months before escaping.

He details his ordeal in his new book co-written with his wife, "A Rope and a Prayer: A Kidnapping from Two Sides," which goes on sale Tuesday. The book chronicles the story of Rohde's kidnapping from two perspectives: David in the hands of the Taliban and his wife Kristen Mulvihill doing whatever she can to free him.

Former U.S. diplomat Peter Galbraith says leaked classified documents confirm his assessment of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.