CAIRO —  In a video broadcast after his death, the Jordanian bomber who killed seven CIA employees and himself sits cross-legged on the floor next to the new chief of the Pakistani Taliban, confirming the group was behind the brazen attack in eastern Afghanistan.

Yet multiple insurgent groups have claimed responsibility for the bombing, and a senior Pakistani militant told The Associated Press that Al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban fighters were also involved in one of the worst attacks in the U.S. intelligence agency’s history.

The attack inside the CIA base could prompt the U.S. to further pressure the government of Pakistan to crack down on militants who operate on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border. U.S. missile strikes against targets on the Pakistan side already are on the rise.

Seven CIA employees and a Jordanian intelligence officer were killed Dec. 30 when the suicide bomber detonated his cache of explosives at Camp Chapman, a tightly secured CIA base in Khost province, a dangerous region southeast of the Afghan capital Kabul.

The CIA had cultivated the bomber — a Jordanian doctor identified as Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi — in hopes of obtaining information about Al Qaeda’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri.

Defending his agents, CIA Director Leon Panetta said the bomber was about to be searched before the blast occurred.

“This was not a question of trusting a potential intelligence asset, even one who had provided information that we could verify independently. It is never that simple, and no one ignored the hazards,” Panetta wrote in a Washington Post op-ed piece posted online Saturday. “The individual was about to be searched by our security officers — a distance away from other intelligence personnel — when he set off his explosives.”

Al-Balawi turned out to be a double-agent — perhaps even a triple-agent. In his 1 1/2 minute video, the bomber said he attacked the CIA to avenge the death of Baitullah Mehsud, the longtime leader of the Pakistani Taliban who was killed in August in a CIA missile strike.

“This jihadi attack will be the first revenge operation against the Americans and their drone teams outside the Pakistan border,” the bomber said on the video. Al-Balawi — wearing an Afghan hat and camouflaged jacket — said the Pakistani Taliban, now under the leadership of its new chief Hakimullah Mehsud, would fight till victory.

“We will never forget the blood of our emir Baitullah Mehsud,” said al-Balawi. “We will always demand revenge for him inside America and outside.”

Statements by Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders since the attack have confused efforts to figure out which group’s fingerprints were on the blast that struck a blow to the CIA’s field expertise in Afghanistan.

A senior militant with the Pakistani Taliban told AP the suicide bomber received training from Qari Hussain, a leading commander of the Pakistani Taliban believed to have run suicide bombing camps. The militant, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of security reasons, said Al Qaeda and the Haqqani network, a highly independent Afghan Taliban faction, also were involved.

Hussain’s Lashkar-e-Janghvi group, a violent anti-Shiite Muslim organization, is believed to provide a reservoir of suicide bombers and has been linked to some of the more spectacular bombings in Pakistan and the death of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Arsala Rahmani — a former minister in the Taliban government that was topped in the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — said the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda often work in unison against Western forces.

“Most of the time, the Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban and Al Qaeda … they are fighting together,” said Rahmani.

A senior NATO intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to release the information, said all insurgent groups have subordinated themselves to the senior Afghan Taliban leadership, believed to be based in Quetta, Pakistan.

After the attack Al Qaeda’s No. 3, Sheikh Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, issued a statement also saying the CIA was targeted to avenge the death of Baitullah Mehsud, as well as the killing of two al-Qaida figures — Abdullah Saeed al-Liby and Abu Saleh al-Somali.

Terrorist watchdog groups disagreed whether the message from Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the strike.

Mahmood Shah, a former security chief for Pakistan’s tribal regions, said the Pakistani Taliban likely provided logistics to the bomber, but Al Qaeda probably provided the recruit himself.

The CIA attack would be the most prolific strike on a U.S. target by the Pakistani Taliban under the 20-something Hakimullah Mehsud’s watch. It is also unusual because the Pakistani Taliban rarely claim responsibility for strikes in Afghanistan.

A major Pakistani army offensive in its South Waziristan tribal region is believed to have forced many Pakistani Taliban leaders to go on the run to other parts of the lawless tribal belt along the Afghan border. Hakimullah Mehsud, for instance, is believed to be evading the Pakistani military offensive by hiding somewhere along the border dividing South and North Waziristan tribal regions.

Though the group initially appeared to be in disarray after the August missile strike and the offensive, it and linked militant groups are suspected in a rising tide of violence in Pakistan. More than 600 people have died in a range of suicide and other bombings across the nuclear-armed country since October.

The release of the al-Balawi footage gives the U.S. proof that Pakistani elements are involved in attacks on its security apparatus in Afghanistan, observers said. Already since the CIA attack, the U.S. has accelerated its use of drone-fired missiles to take out militant targets in Pakistan’s tribal regions.

At least six such strikes have hit North Waziristan, where the Haqqanis have strongholds, in recent days, including two missiles fired into a home Saturday in Data Khel that killed two people and wounded three others, two Pakistani intelligence officials said.

Severe winter weather continues to disrupt travel in Germany, forcing the cancellation of more than 200 flights, and contributing to road accidents.

At Frankfurt airport, 226 flights were cancelled and hundreds of passengers stranded as snow ploughs struggled to clear runways.

Residents have been advised to stock up on enough essential supplies to last up to four days.

Many other countries across Europe have also been hit by the bitter conditions.

Nearly 140 people have frozen to death in the past few weeks in Poland, and in Switzerland, heavy snow has cut the flow of lorries through Alpine tunnels.

The Eurostar service between Britain, France and Belgium ran a limited service on Saturday, with a reduced service planned for Sunday and Monday.

Passengers have been urged to cancel or postpone their journeys if they do not have to travel.

‘Paralysed’

Germany’s Civil Protection Office (BBK) said heavy snowfalls over the weekend could trigger local power cuts and severely disrupt public transport.

Some passengers had to stay overnight in Frankfurt airport

More than 300 car accidents were reported in the south-western state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, with more than 40 people injured, Associated Press reported.

In the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia there were 108 reported accidents, while at the German-French border near Freiburg, hundreds of trucks were stuck for hours when French authorities closed the highway because of heavy snow.

Gale-force winds and drifting snow are expected to bring traffic to a standstill in many parts of Germany, a situation exacerbated by shortages of grit.

Airports have called in extra staff and rail operators have warned of delays.

Berlin’s Schoenefeld and Tegel airports, and Munich airport reported cancellations.

On Friday evening, Nuremberg airport was closed briefly after an Air Berlin flight with 133 people on board skidded off the runway and became stuck in snow. No-one was injured in the incident.

The snow is already more than 30cm (1 ft) deep on the isle of Ruegen, off Germany’s Baltic coast, ZDF TV says.

German households have been advised to keep three or four days’ worth of provisions, including alternative cooking fuel in case of power cuts. Among the essential items listed by the BBK is a battery-powered radio, for checking weather reports.

In cities like Duesseldorf, Red Cross workers were setting up heated tents for emergency accommodation as up to 10 homeless people have frozen to death in recent weeks because of the cold weather.

Icebreakers

In the UK, which is suffering its worst winter for decades, Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged that gas supplies would not run out, and that road salt will get to “where it is most needed”.

Temperatures have dropped as low as -22C (-8F) in some parts.

Heated tents were set up in some cities for people sleeping rough

Local authorities have agreed to cut their use of salt by 25% in an attempt to preserve dwindling supplies.

British Airways cancelled 54 flights from Heathrow on Saturday. Delays were expected at other airports and low-budget airline Easyjet said it was cancelling some flights.

In the Netherlands, icebreakers have been deployed to clear shipping routes such as the Twente canal, the harbours of Almelo and Enschede and the Ijsselmeer inland sea.

Northern Spain is expecting more heavy snowfalls while the country’s south has been hit by severe floods.

France is also braced for more snow. Meteo France warned: “The amount of snow expected is significant, exceptional even.”

Parts of France – notably the south-eastern region of Provence – are without power and suffering transport delays after up to 20cm of snow fell in recent days.

Dozens of flights were cancelled in Toulouse, Lyon Brest and Paris.

In the southeast, near the Mediterranean, power lines snapped under the weight of snow, cutting power to at least 7,500 homes.

Google and other net firms could be taxed under plans being considered by the French government.

A report, commissioned by the government, suggests firms such as Google, Yahoo and Facebook should pay a new tax on their online ad revenues.

The money could be used to fund legal alternatives for buying books, films and music on the internet.

But critics say the tax would be difficult to implement and Google says it could slow down innovation.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has taken a tough line on the increasing dominance of digital content.

France has just introduced tough new legislation aimed at removing those who persistently download illegal content from the net.

It has also gone head-to-head with Google over its plans to digitise the world’s books, with a project to set up its own digital library financed by the government to the tune of £700m.

And it is considering a law which would give net users the option to have old data about themselves deleted.

The proposals for a tax on content is still very much in the early stages and there are few details of how it would exactly work.

Patrick Zelnik, who contributed to the report and is also the founder of the French president’s wife’s record label, hopes the idea will be taken on board across the EU.

But Google is among those to have voiced opposition to the plan.

“We don’t think introducing an additional tax on internet advertising is the right way forward as it could slow down innovation,” said Olivier Esper, senior policy manager for Google France.

The better way to support content creation is to find new business models that help consumers find great content and rewards artists and publishers for their work.”

Iran opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi’s car has been fired on in the northern city of Qazvin, his website reports.

Mr Karroubi, who was in the city for a religious ceremony, was in the car at the time but was not said to be hurt.

The incident happened shortly after he left a house that had been surrounded by what the site called a well-organised group throwing stones.

Mr Karroubi was a reformist candidate in June’s election, and has protested strongly against alleged voting fraud.

Along with the main opposition candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, he has organised a series of mass protests in the months since.

They have grown into the biggest challenge to the government since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

‘Stone-throwing’

The semi-official Fars news agency, apparently reporting the same incident, said that Mr Karroubi was forced to leave Qazvin on Thursday after a group staged a rally outside the place he was staying.

The report said the protesters chanted, “God damn Karroubi” and other insults and demanded he leave town.

According to his website, Sahamnews.org, Mr Karroubi was visiting the town to attend a mourning ceremony for opposition supporters killed in protests.

“Around 500 basiji [militia] and residents of nearby villages surrounded the place where he was and attacked the building with stones, breaking windows,” it said.

After several hours Mr Karroubi was able to leave with the help of police, but his car was attacked with gunfire as it pulled away.

As it was an armoured car, only the windows were damaged, the site said.

Israel is believed to be nuclear armed, though it does not confirm it

Senior Israeli and Iranian officials have met face-to-face and discussed the threat of nuclear arms, Israel says.

Israeli officials told the BBC each side attended panel sessions of a disarmament and non-proliferation conference in Cairo in September.

Iran had denied the Israeli accounts, but if confirmed it would be the first official exchange between the bitter foes since Iran’s 1979 revolution.

Israel is believed to have nuclear arms and accuses Iran of seeking them too.

Representing Israel at the closed-door event at the Four Seasons hotel in the Egyptian capital was the head of arms control at the Israeli Atomic Agency, Meirav Zafary-Odiz, Israeli media reported.

ANALYSIS Jon Leyne, BBC Tehran correspondent One expert on Iran once said the Islamic Republic rests on three pillars: “Death to America,” “Death to Israel” and “Long live the Hijab” (the Islamic headscarf for women) “Death to Israel” is the most firmly held tenet of the true believers. Almost any bad news for the Islamic Republic is routinely blamed on “Zionists”. At news conferences abroad, Iran’s officials refuse to listen to questions from Israelis, let alone answer them. Its international sports stars do their utmost to avoid competing alongside Israelis. Iran has dealt with Israel when it has had to, mostly through third parties. In the Iran-Contra affair, it bought Israeli arms via the US. Nevertheless, the possibility of direct negotiations between Iran and Israel on something as sensitive to both countries as the nuclear issue, appears extremely remote.

Iran’s ambassador to the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, was also reportedly at the conference.

Reacting to the reports, Iran’s atomic energy organisation spokesmen denied any meetings had taken place with Israeli officials.

“This lie is a kind of psychological operation designed to affect the constant success of Iran’s dynamic diplomacy in the Geneva and Vienna meetings,” said Ali Shirzadian in quotes broadcast on Iranian state TV.

A senior Israeli government official, meanwhile, described it as “preposterous” that the Cairo panel sessions implied any kind of diplomatic contact between Iran and Israel.

“For years Iran and Israel have participated at the same time in multilateral forums like this,” he said, giving the examples of UN agencies, and the IAEA.

Contacts avoided

Iran does not recognise Israel and the two sides are frequently involved in exchanging hostile threats and denunciations.

At international conferences and sporting events, representatives of the Islamic Republic invariably avoid any contact with their Israeli counterparts.

Israel’s Haaretz newspaper says three panel sessions of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament conference involved exchanges between the Iranian and Israeli delegates.

The sessions dealt with efforts to make the Middle East a nuclear-free zone, non-proliferation in the region and developing peaceful nuclear energy.

In one of the discussions, Haaretz quotes Mr Soltanieh directly asking Ms Zafary-Odiz: “Do you or do you not have nuclear weapons?”

Ms Zafary-Odiz reportedly smiled, but did not respond.

The newspaper says the two representatives did not meet separately outside the session or shake hands.

Israel is widely believed to have a stockpile of atomic warheads with delivery systems, but it refuses to confirm or deny their existence and has not signed the international Nuclear Non-Profileration Treaty.

The US leads accusations that Iran is engaged in a covert attempt to develop nuclear weapons, although Iran says its nuclear activities are purely for peaceful ends.

In an 2005 joint Israeli-U.S. exercise, a Patriot missile is fired from a desert launch site in southern Israel.

The long-planned, two-week air defense exercise has been dubbed Juniper Cobra 10 and will involve participation of 1,000 personnel from the U.S. European Command and the Israeli military, according to a statement from the Israel Defense Forces. It’s the fifth such exercise since 2001.

According to the global security analysis firm Stratfor, the Juniper Cobra drill will be the “largest and most complex bilateral ballistic missile defense exercise” the two countries have conducted together and “will include a series of ballistic missile defense systems that would be used to defend against a hypothetical ballistic missile attack launched from Iran.”

In a news release about the joint air defense exercises, the Israeli military said the drill “is not in response to any world events,” but the maneuvers do come at time of increasing tensions amongst the United States and Israel with Iran over its nuclear program.

Both the American and Israeli governments believe Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons, an allegation Tehran has denied.

Stratfor said that despite the fact that the Juniper Cobra exercise has been planned for more than a year the drill “will ratchet up already sky-high tensions between the West and Iran.”

Among the systems expected to be deployed and tested during the drills are the Arrow and Patriot missiles, along with the Theater High Altitude Area Defense and the naval-deployed Aegis missile defense systems.

The IDF statement said, “In the course of the exercise small numbers of U.S. forces from U.S. Army Europe … will be temporarily deployed to a number of locations in Israel in the vicinity of civilian areas.”

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The Vatican says more Anglicans have expressed an interest in joining the Catholic Church.

The process will allow groups of Anglicans, including bishops and married priests, to join the Catholic Church some 450 years after King Henry VIII broke from Rome and created the Church of England, forerunner of the Anglican Communion.

The number of Anglicans wishing to join the Catholic Church has increased in recent years as the Anglican church has welcomed the ordination of women and openly gay clergy and blessed homosexual partnerships, said Cardinal William Joseph Levada, the head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Their talks with the Vatican recently began speeding up, Vatican officials said, leading to Tuesday’s announcement. Should Anglicans be allowed to join the Catholic Church? Have your say below

“The Catholic Church is responding to the many requests that have been submitted to the Holy See from groups of Anglican clergy and faithful in different parts of the world who wish to enter into full visible communion,” Levada said.

Levada said “hundreds” of Anglicans around the world have expressed their desire to join the Catholic Church. Among them are 50 Anglican bishops, said Archbishop Joseph Augustine Di Noia of the Congregation for Divine Worship.

The Anglicans will be able to retain their Anglican rites while recognizing the pope as their leader, Vatican officials said. The British monarch is the titular head of the Anglican church.

While married Anglican priests may be ordained as Catholic priests, the same does not apply to married Anglican bishops, Levada said.

“We’ve been praying for this unity for 40 years and we’ve not anticipated it happening now,” Di Noia said. “The Holy Spirit is at work here.”

The Church of England said the move ends a “period of uncertainty” for Anglican groups who wanted more unity with the Catholic Church.

Both groups have a “substantial overlap in faith, doctrine and spirituality” and will continue to hold official dialogues, the archbishops of Canterbury and Westminster said in a joint statement.

“Those Anglicans who have approached the Holy See have made clear their desire for full, visible unity in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church,” Levada said. “At the same time, they have told us of the importance of their Anglican traditions of spirituality and worship for their faith journey.”

Preserving Anglican traditions, such as mass rites, adds to the diversity of the Catholic Church, he said.

“The unity of the church does not require a uniformity that ignores cultural diversity, as the history of Christianity shows,” he said. “Moreover, the many diverse traditions present in the Catholic Church today are all rooted in the principle articulated by St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians: ‘There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism.”

Iranian-American Kian Tajbakhsh has been sentenced to more than 12 years in an Iranian jail.

The United States is “deeply concerned” that Kian Tajbakhsh has been sentenced to prison, spokesman Ian Kelly said.

“Mr. Tajbakhsh poses no threat to the Iranian government or its national security,” Kelly said. “Given the groundless nature of charges against him we call on Iran to grant his immediate release. As an independent, internationally respected academic, Mr. Tajbakhsh has always sought to foster better understanding between Iran and the United States and Iran and the international community.”

Kelly said the prison sentence is for 15 years. Iran’s state-run news agency, IRNA, reported that Tajbakhsh had been sentenced to more than 12 years in prison.

Tajbakhsh’s attorney said he plans to appeal the verdict from Iran’s Revolutionary Court, IRNA reported.

Tajbakhsh was arrested in July and was one of more than 1,000 people detained following a massive government crackdown. He was tried along with nearly 100 others, including journalists, reformist leaders and former government ministers.

Exactly what Tajbakhsh was convicted of was unclear. He had been accused of numerous charges, including plotting a “soft revolution” against the Iranian regime through his work with George Soros’ Open Society Institute, according to IRNA.

Tajbakhsh resigned from his position with the institute after he was arrested and detained for four months in 2007 on unspecified charges. He holds dual citizenship in Iran and the United States.

Tajbakhsh was the only American among the nearly 100 people on trial for their role in the post-election unrest. The State Department has expressed its deep concern over Tajbakhsh’s detention and trial and has called on Iran to release him. The protests were primarily against a decision by Iran’s election authority, which declared incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the overwhelming winner of the June 12 race. Opposition supporters accused the government of fraud.

The mass trial included Tehran-based Newsweek journalist Maziar Bahari, who was released from prison on Saturday.

Bahari, who is an Iranian and Canadian national, arrived in London, England, on Tuesday to witness the upcoming birth of his first child, the magazine reported.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the mass trial a “sign of weakness” that shows that the Islamic republic “is afraid of its own people.”

“It is a show trial, there’s no doubt about it,” Clinton told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on his “GPS” program. “It demonstrates I think better than any of us could ever say that this Iranian leadership is afraid of their own people, and afraid of the truth and the facts coming out.”