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The Pakistan-Afghanistan border must be secured to keep terrorists from crossing "at free will," Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S. says.

Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry told VOA Urdu in an interview that the Afghan government's change in priorities � focusing on protecting urban areas � has given the Taliban and other extremist groups room to roam freely in a growing patchwork in the rest of the country.

"Pakistan has been cautioning for a long time that the ungoverned spaces in Afghanistan will act as a magnet for the militants of the world," Chaudhry said. "I think the situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating."

He repeated Pakistan's claims that it is not harboring any terror groups despite President Donald Trump's insistence, as part of his new strategy for the region, that Islamabad must do more to crack down on extremists.

"In Pakistan itself, there is no organized presence of ISIS," Chaudhry said, criticizing Afghanistan's claims that Islamic State fighters are filtering in from Pakistan. "Don't create distractions by saying they come from Pakistan. We can never tolerate the presence of Daesh [ISIS] in Pakistan."

Pakistan says recent military operations have chased terrorists from the country.

"In the last three years, we have done a lot, not for the sake of any other country, but for our own people," Chaudhry said. "We have defeated the forces of terrorism. The terrorists are on the run. There is no safe haven in Pakistan. The safe havens have moved into Afghanistan. That is where the focus of action should be."

He called for closer cooperation between the two countries' intelligence agencies and militaries.

"One major area to work on is border management," Chaudhry said. "We both must make sure the terrorists cannot cross the border at free will. Let's secure that border."

Pakistan has been building a border wall and has repeatedly closed the main border crossings, shutting down trade between the two countries for extended periods.

Chaudhry also called for cooperation on dealing with Afghan refugees and reconstruction, saying there is no military solution possible for the ongoing conflict there.

Source: Voice of America

WHITE HOUSE The White House on Thursday denied that the president's announcement on moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem meant his administration was pulling out of the Middle East peace process.

"In fact, in the president's remarks, he said that we are as committed to the peace process as ever, and we want to continue to push forward in those conversations and those discussions," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters. "And hopefully the ultimate goal, I think, of all those parties is to reach a peace deal. And that's something that the United States is very much committed to."

No other country has immediately followed President Donald Trump's lead in planning to relocate its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, something the White House is acknowledging.

"I'm not aware of any countries that we anticipate that happening at any point soon," Sanders said. "I'm not saying that they aren't, but I'm not aware of them."

A day after the president's declaration that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, the Russian ambassador in Israel, Alexander Shein, said Moscow could move its embassy to West Jerusalem "after the Palestinians and the Israelis agree on all issues of the final status of the Palestinian territories."

Russian statement

The Russian Foreign Ministry, in a statement viewed as a surprise by Israelis, said it considered "East Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state. At the same time, we must state that in this context we view West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel."

In response to Trump's announcement, Palestinian factions announced that Friday would be a "Day of Rage," while the Islamist group Hamas called for an uprising against Israel.

The Israeli military said one of its aircraft and a tank had targeted two militant posts in the Gaza Strip after three rockets were launched at Israel.

The Al-Tawheed Brigades � which has ignored the call of Hamas, the dominant force in Gaza, to desist from firing rockets � claimed responsibility for the launches.

Stone-throwing Palestinian protesters have clashed with Israeli troops, who responded by firing tear gas, rubber bullets and live bullets, on Gaza and the West Bank in response to Trump's announcement.

Trump said Wednesday that he was directing the State Department to begin drawing up architectural plans for a U.S. embassy in the holy city. But the actual relocation of the embassy would take years, according to White House officials.

Both Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis expressed concern about the timing of Trump's announcement, according to U.S. officials.

Asked by VOA whether the president's declaration had been delayed at the request of the two Cabinet members in order to put in place adequate security at U.S. embassies, Sanders said the decision was made only after "a thoughtful and responsible process" and that "components of the decision went through the full interagency process."

Palestinian officials said Trump's decision had disqualified the U.S. as an honest broker in the peace process.

Many U.S. allies also disagreed with the move. The U.N. Security Council and the Arab League plan to meet soon to discuss the action.

'Recognizing the reality'

Tillerson defended the decision on a visit to Vienna.

"All of Israel's government offices are largely in Jerusalem already, so the U.S. is just recognizing the reality of that," the secretary of state said. He noted, however, that Trump "also said the U.S. would support a two-state solution if that is the desire of the two parties, and he also said this does not in any way finalize the status of Jerusalem."

The Russian foreign minister, with whom Tillerson met Thursday in Vienna, warned that if Washington prematurely moved its embassy to Jerusalem, it could endanger the two-state solution.

"We have asked them to explain the meaning of the decisions on eventually moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem," Sergei Lavrov told reporters. "We have asked to explain what consequences of this move the Americans see for the efforts taken under the U.N. aegis and by the Quartet of international mediators."

The Quartet, established in 2002, consists of entities involved in mediating the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The members are the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia.

Source: Voice of America

Pakistan's Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights announced Thursday that it would talk to recovered missing persons to inquire about the circumstances under which they went missing.

Nasreen Jalil, chairman of the Senate committee, told VOA's Urdu service that the recovered missing persons will be summoned in three weeks to participate in an on-camera question-and-answer session.

"The committee has suggested that recovered persons should tell on-camera what they went through. Hopefully, it will lead us to information to help determine the forces behind these abductions," Jalil said.

She said that in Pakistan, people disappear "only to re-appear afterwards, but no one talks about what happens during the time they remained missing."

The Senate group was briefed about the missing persons' situation in the volatile Balochistan province. Provincial official Hameedul Nasir said 136 people currently are missing in Balochistan. He said 104 missing persons were recovered in the province, but none of them were willing to cooperate with the authorities about their abductions.

The Senate's human rights committee has indicated that once it records the statements of the recovered persons, it will summon the country's intelligence agencies and question them to explain their involvement in the cases.

Intelligence agencies suspected

Forced disappearances remain a major and continued challenge in Pakistan, where civil rights activists and international rights organizations repeatedly have called upon the Pakistani authorities to determine and hold accountable elements behind the enforced disappearances.

Pakistan's rights defenders, politicians and lawmakers maintain the enforced disappearances are unconstitutional. Many critics do not hesitate to point at the state intelligence agencies and their alleged involvement in the disappearances.

Farhat Ullah Babar, a prominent lawmaker who belongs to former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan's People Party, told VOA: "The nation knows who the culprit here is. It is about time we take those names aloud and make them public."

Cases on the rise

According to recent statistics submitted to Pakistan's Supreme Court by the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, about 1,498 cases of enforced disappearances remain pending with the government.

Most of the missing persons belong to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan's province along the Afghan border, where 837 cases were registered. Punjab had 237 cases, Sindh and Balochistan had 136 cases, and FATA, the federally administered tribal areas, had 63 registered cases of missing persons.

A recent Human Rights Watch report says that despite the concerns of rights activists, the forced disappearances continue at an alarming speed. From August to October 2017, more than 300 complaints of enforced disappearance were registered.

The report further noted it is "one of the largest number of cases received in any three-month period since 2011."

Mehdi Hasan, the current chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan � an independent rights watchdog � criticizes the Pakistani authorities' role and its silence on the matter, and believes the enforced disappearances are directly linked to the state agencies.

"Those who are recovered are tight-lipped and will not, under any circumstances, take the names of those who are behind these mysterious abductions," Hasan told VOA.

Hasan fears no one will have the "courage to explain who abducted them and what happened to them during the time they went missing."

High-profile disappearances

The Senate committee's decision has come at a time when the disappearance of social activist Raza Khan from Lahore has made news worldwide, and Pakistan's rights activists are running a social media campaign to recover him.

Earlier this year, five liberal bloggers and social media activists went missing only to re-appear after a few weeks under mysterious circumstances.

The bloggers were charged with committing blasphemy during the time they were missing and had to flee the country once they were recovered.

Aasim Saeed and Waqas Goraya, two of the abducted bloggers, later blamed their abduction on the military and state's intelligence agencies.

Pakistani government and the military deny any involvement in the disappearances.

Source: Voice of America

STATE DEPARTMENT The State Department has issued security warnings at scores of U.S. embassies around the world, bracing for protests or violence from President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. At the United Nations, American diplomats are preparing for a meeting Friday called by eight of the 15 Security Council members, including close U.S. allies Britain, Italy and France.

Reaction around the world has been almost universally critical of the decision, which marks a break from decades of U.S. policy.

France, Germany, Italy and Britain have all sharply criticized the decision, saying the status of Jerusalem should be negotiated within the framework of the final stages of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which have been suspended for the past three years.

In Vienna on Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson defended the president's announcement, saying recognizing Jerusalem is simply a recognition of reality.

"The reality is Israel's government, its courts, its prime minister's office is all in Jerusalem today, so it is just an acknowledgment of what is the reality on the ground," he said.

Critics say that even though Israel's government treats the city as the country's capital, the U.S. decision to recognize it preempts peace talks for the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Palestinians want an independent country with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Tillerson said the U.S. designation should not affect those negotiations.

"We think that the final status of Jerusalem should be a result of direct negotiations between two parties there, and I think we should do anything possible to avoid further escalation in the region," he said.

Tillerson sought to reassure those opposed to moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem that there would be no hasty action.

"As to the move of the embassy, the president has directed me and the State Department to undertake the process to begin an effort to move the embassy," he said. "We are not going to be doing that quickly. We have to acquire a site. We have to develop building plans. We'll have to construct the building. So this is not something that will happen overnight."

Violence, protests

Violent clashes erupted Thursday in the West Bank and Gaza between hundreds of Palestinian protesters and Israeli troops and street protests.

Fearing more violent protests, the State Department took the unusual step of updating a worldwide caution to U.S. citizens abroad:

"As terrorist attacks, political upheaval, and violence often take place without any warning, U.S. citizens are strongly encouraged to maintain a high level of vigilance and take appropriate steps to increase their security awareness when traveling."

The caution said U.S. government facilities worldwide remain in a heightened state of alert, and warned they may temporarily close or suspend public services. The U.S. Embassy in Amman, Jordan, has temporarily suspended routine public services.

The U.S. Embassy in Amman has temporarily suspended routine public services. U.S. government personnel and their family members in Jordan are limiting public movements, including an instruction for children not to attend school on December 7, 2017.

� U.S. Embassy Jordan (@USEmbassyJordan) December 6, 2017

U.S. embassies in countries across the world issued similar security warnings.

Source: Voice of America

The U.S. State Department has issued a "worldwide caution" warning after President Donald Trump's announcement Wednesday the U.S. would recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and move the American embassy there."U.S. government facilities worldwide re...