By Ian Williams, NBC News Correspondent

I never thought I'd see the day that Ratko Mladic was finally brought to justice.

I witnessed his Bosnian Serb underlings at their most cruel and barbaric, reporting in 1992 on the horrific detention centers in which Bosnian Muslims were incarcerated – bringing back memories of Nazi concentration camps in scenes we thought we would never again witness in Europe.

The sheer terror in the faces and voices of those herded behind the wire is something I will never forget.

Over the years, I have kept in touch with many of those who survived the camps. Dr. Idriz Merdzanic, a doctor in one of the camps I reported from, is one of the bravest men I have ever met.

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He took photographs of some of the appalling injuries he had to treat in the Trnopolje concentration camp in northern Bosnia and, in the face of enormous personal danger, gave the film to my ITN colleague Penny Marshall to smuggle out.

He's now in Germany, where he started a new life. He still sends me Christmas cards, asking about my family. He says he'd like to return one day, but the scars from that period will take a long time to heal.

The television reports from Marshall and I were the first to expose the horror of the camps set up by the Bosnian Serbs. (Click on the video link above to see the original 1992 report).

I still recall roaming around the camp, trying to interview the terrified prisoners. They desperately wanted to talk, to expose what was happening there, but they – and I – knew that for them to speak too openly was a death sentence, as their guards watched and listened. So they spoke in coded English, only hinting at the horrors they faced.

I worried terribly afterward that I might somehow have made things worse for them, but have been enormously grateful over the years for all the letters from former inmates saying how things improved after the worldwide outrage that followed our reports – that our reports helped save lives.

I never met Mladic, I just saw his handiwork. 

The Bosnian Serb wartime army commander is facing international war crimes charges, including some stemming from the slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica during Bosnia's 1992-95 war. After 16 years on the run, he was arrested Thursday in a northern Serbian village. A Belgrade court ruled on Friday that he will be extradited to a U.N. tribunal at the Hague.

Over the years, I also met many of those who had tried to track him down. In Iraq I came across a group of British special forces who had been tasked with grabbing Europe's most wanted man in the mid-‘90s. They described weeks of undercover work in Serbia, which culminated in their grabbing the wrong man – an innocent farmer, whom they quickly released after arranging some quick compensation for the rattled Mladic lookalike.

Those I have kept in touch with had largely given up hope that Mladic would ever be found. His capture probably reflects the changing political situation in Serbia. It’s hard to imagine that his whereabouts were not known over the years. His capture will never erase the appalling memories of those who suffered and lost loved ones at the hands of his thugs, but it will bring some relief that he is at last to face justice.

Related links:

See a Channel 4 report on Ian Williams' reporting on the concentration camps in 1992: Ratko Mladic arrest: life-saving journalism

Opportunity lost: How U.S. backed off in hunt for Mladic

 

By Ian Williams, NBC News Correspondent

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – At breakfast at my hotel I was having trouble with the cornflake dispenser. It was one of those tall cylindrical containers with a lever at the bottom that needed to be turned for the cornflakes to tumble out, only the lever was stuck. I gave up in frustration and almost walked into a young woman who'd been observing my dismal efforts.

"Dui Bu Qui," (“excuse me”), she said, addressing me in Mandarin, before simply opening the top of the container and ladling out her cornflakes.

She then returned to a table of what looked to me like Chinese businessmen. She was by far the smartest-dressed at the table, the translator I assumed, while the men – ruddy faced, a bit rough around the edges, and looking a little uncomfortable in dark suits and ties – were fairly typical of the traders or small town entrepreneurs I'm more familiar with on trips to provincial China.

I looked further around the restaurant. There were several more tables of what looked to me like Chinese businessmen, while at the back, more discretely seated, was a more polished group, Chinese diplomats or bankers perhaps, pouring over some documents. (Possibly the latest photos of the American stealth helicopter downed in the Osama bin Laden raid, one colleague mischievously suggested. The Chinese military is allegedly anxious to get a look at the plans for the sophisticated chopper that was capable of evading radar detection).

The reason I mention this is because this restaurant, in one of Islamabad's best and most secure hotels, has always been an anthropologists dream.

At any one time the scene provides a wonderful insight into what's going on, who's up and who's down in turbulent Pakistan. Journalists, diplomats, business people and spooks rub shoulders around the buffet table with Pakistani government officials and bearded frontier tribesmen in flowing robes.

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On a recent morning, there were several tattooed Western men with shaven heads and bull-necks, some sort of security for one of the aforementioned I assumed, for whom "low-key" was clearly not part of the training.

China, Pakistan’s ‘all-weather friend’
It’s been like this over the many years I've been coming to Pakistan, and staying at this hotel, but I've never seen so many Chinese at the breakfast buffet.

One look at the newspapers lying around the restaurant, and it’s easy to see why the Chinese are so welcome here.

"China urges US to respect Pak sovereignty," headlined Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper Thursday. While the Express Tribune declared: "China endorses Pakistan's response to US raid."

There has been much Pakistani praise of their "all-weather friend" in Beijing.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has been in Beijing this week and just clinched a deal in which China will provide Pakistan with 50 fighter jets to the tune of $20-25 million a pop. 

The visit was organized some time back, but China has sought to maximize its diplomatic advantage following Pakistan's humiliation over the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and the subsequent crisis in U.S.-Pakistan relations.

"China and Pakistan will remain forever good neighbors, good friends, good partners and good brothers," according to the Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, quoted approvingly in newspapers here.

The authorities in Punjab Province have even declared they will no longer accept aid from the U.S., but only from friends who do no attach strings, read China.

Of course China and Pakistan have long been close, with Beijing allegedly helping in the development of Pakistan's nuclear weapon program, but it has only been more recently that the economic relationship has really taken off. China is pouring cash into Pakistan's infrastructure and natural resources, and in a December visit the Chinese prime minister announced billions of dollars of proposed investments.

No wonder the crowds around that buffet are looking increasingly Chinese.

Western diplomats, watching from their corner of the restaurant, seemed remarkably relaxed about the budding friendship between the two regional neighbors.

Whatever diplomatic advantage it may be seeking this week, China has welcomed the death of Bin Laden, and has every reason itself to be concerned about Islamic militancy across the mountains from its own Muslim areas. Western diplomats believe its private message to Gilani is likely to have been very different from the public platitudes.

And Chinese economic assistance can be double-edged.

Investment is primarily motivated by China's hunger for raw materials, and it is frequently accompanied by Chinese labor. Trade between the two countries is also heavily skewed in China's favor. Pakistani manufacturers cannot compete with the cheap Chinese goods flooding Pakistan's markets, leading traders to frequently grumble about quality.

Back at the breakfast buffet, the young woman who I'd (almost) bumped into at the cornflake dispenser, rose to leave with her entourage. She and a colleague carried between them a heavy bag that appeared to contain two Chinese tea sets – gifts, I assumed, for their would-be business partners in a country that for the moment needs every friend it can get.

By Jim Maceda, NBC News Correspondent

KABUL – What will Afghanistan look like in 2015? That depends a lot on how you see the country – and the conflict – in 2011.

There are basically two camps: unbounded optimists who see great things in Afghanistan’s future and pessimists who see a quagmire that can only get worse.

The billion-dollar question – especially for U.S. taxpayers – is which view will prevail?

Peace, stability and good times ahead
The optimists, and that includes every U.S. military commander and government official I’ve ever spoken to here, believe that the coalition effort at nation-securing and building (aka counter-insurgency) is on track and truly making a difference.

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They point out that the 40,000 additional U.S. forces that “surged” in two waves in 2009 and 2010 have largely succeeded in clearing out the Taliban from its staging areas in the insurgent heartlands of Kandahar and Helmand. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates even recently dared to use the ‘t’ word when he suggested that this year, 2011, could be a “tipping point” if those battlefield gains are held and expanded.

These same optimists see an Afghan-run nation by 2015 which will have effectively won the war. How can that be?

Maj. Gen. John Nicholson, Chief of Operations for General David Petraeus and a veteran of six years on the Afghan battlefield, put it bluntly. “We will defeat the Taliban in southern Afghanistan this year,” he told me. “Defeat, in military doctrine, means preventing the enemy from obtaining its objectives. In the Taliban’s case, we – and the Afghan security forces – will prevent it from holding on to, or taking back, its safe havens there.”

Similar-thinking optimists say that, by 2015, Afghan national security forces will be trained and equipped well enough to have contained, if not defeated, the Taliban and its al-Qaida patrons. To the point where neither is an existential threat – where violence rarely rises above the hit-and-run attack or the occasional Baghdad-style car or suicide bombing.

By 2015, the optimists believe, U.S. forces will have drawn down to a mere 20-30,000 troops, serving in a non-combat, mentoring role, their footprint barely visible. And they believe Afghan President Hamid Karzai will have given up his monopoly on power by then, too.

“By 2015 the rule of law will be the order of the day,” one U.S. law enforcement official working in Kabul recently told me, “and we need to prepare for that now.” Some opponents of the Karzai administration have even said that, once in power, they would set up a kind of “Commission for Good Government,” tasked with finding and recovering the billions of dollars that have allegedly disappeared from the Karzai coffers over the years.

And, given the sweep of the “Arab Spring” not too far away, there’s a lot of wishful thinking these days among Western-run non-governmental organizations and some Afghan think-tanks about the rise of an “Afghan Spring.” A kind of “Pashtun Awakening” in the south and east of the country, where young men of fighting age reject the Taliban’s and al-Qaida’s message of hate and instead stand up and demand reforms and accountability from the Afghan government – be it local or central.

Meanwhile, there’s optimism on other fronts: USAID continues to pump millions of dollars into experimental farming in the rich Helmand River Valley, even during the fighting season. The mostly young, American field agents believe that in the three or four years it will take to produce a crop, Afghan farmers can earn at least twice the profit from their pomegranates, grapes, saffron and cucumbers than they do today by growing illegal opium poppy.

These U.S. officials say that, once Highway 1, Afghanistan’s main artery, is fully secured and repaired, farmers in Helmand’s Nad Ali district will be able to drive their produce all the way to the markets of Kandahar City. By 2015, these “optimists” see that insurgent beltway – currently an improvised explosive devise alley – becoming a bread basket.

Their dreams seem to know no bounds: 
*Afghans across the country will once again feel secure
*Helmand’s Kajaki Dam turbines (still a front line in 2011) will churn out enough electricity by 2015 to make the ubiquitous mom and pop generators obsolete
*International consortia will bid hundreds of billions of dollars to exploit vast veins of lithium and titanium in proven mines, from the moguls of Badghis to the mountains of Zabul
*In the face of such emerging stability, al-Qaida and its affiliates will withdraw from the drone-infested tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistan border, seeking safety and relevance in the chaos of Yemen and Somalia

I’ve heard it all, including the less optimistic flip-side.

Not so fast…
The other vision comes from those who see today’s Afghanistan as an irretrievable and irreconcilable quagmire. For these pessimists, the U.S. effort here is a $120 billion-a-year nightmare.

And by 2015, they believe things will only get a lot worse. According to some Afghanistan-based pollsters, the Taliban already controls or is highly effective in 70 percent of the country. And if, as it promises, the U.S. hands over security responsibility to the Afghans by the end of 2014, these pessimists – others call them “realists” – see a kind of Vietnam scenario playing out. They foresee a re-energized Taliban making a mockery of the corrupt and divided Afghan army and police, who either surrender en masse or go AWOL.

In the face of this rising threat of a meltdown, the pessimists see Karzai trying to hold onto power at all cost, even by cancelling elections in 2014 and offering the Taliban leadership – currently in exile in Pakistan – a prominent role in his government.

Karzai rivals, like former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah and ex-intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh see this threat as well and have loudly denounced Karzai’s calls to negotiate with “our brothers, the Taliban.”

Several of my Afghan friends, meanwhile, are very worried about what their lives will be like here by 2015. One is seeking a new life in Dubai; another is looking for an apartment for his family in Istanbul just in case, as he fears, Afghanistan “goes to hell” again.

The optimists shake their heads and blame the fear-mongering on conspiracy theorists, of which there are certainly plenty here. “Give the Afghans some security, and jobs, and they will do the rest themselves,” Gen. Nicholson says.

Something in between?
But is Afghanistan really a tale of just two visions: One of hope and progress, the other of defeat and despair?

There is also a middling “third vision.” That one is of an Afghanistan in, say, 2015 looking pretty much like it does today, somewhere between hope and despair.

A very recent case in point: The death of Osama bin Laden. The optimists saw his demise as a body blow to al-Qaida and a decisive moment to go for the jugular. “Mullah Omar, you’re next,” some declared about the Taliban leader in exile. The pessimists either predicted a massive retaliation against U.S. troops or claimed that killing bin Laden meant the war was over and it was time to get out. But others, like Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez, the Deputy Commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, told reporters here that it was just too early to say what, if any, effect bin Laden’s death would have on the war.

And why all this concern about 2015, anyway?

Well, here’s why – on my flight into Kabul from Dubai two weeks ago I was seated next to an elderly Afghan who’d left his country in the 1960’s, married an American woman and became a U.S. citizen. He said he was traveling frequently back to his homeland these days. A retired engineer, he was helping a Canadian company with plans to mine huge iron ore deposits.

By 2015, he said, the company would be making a good profit, hiring many Afghans. But all I could think of as I smiled and listened to this inspiring old man was, “I wonder how long it’ll take for Taliban gunmen to shut down the mine?”

Or – in other words – which vision will prevail?

Jim Maceda is an NBC News correspondent based in London, currently on assignment in Afghanistan, which he’s covered since the 1980’s.

By Chris Hampson, Director of NBC News’ International News

LONDON – There are many things to admire about Her Majesty the Queen.

Her regal stiff upper lip is one of them.

But her resoluteness in smiling at a perfectly-poured pint of Guinness during a tour of the famous brewery Wednesday – and not even taking a sip of it – is one of those regal mysteries that leaves me gasping for a glass of the black stuff.

There is something particularly beguiling about a glass of Irish stout – deep black with a creamy head and a flavor of burnt malt and chocolate.

It is, as they say, an “acquired” taste. 

I remember a wonderful advertising campaign some years back that read simply: “I don’t like Guinness. So I’ve never tried it.”

I suspect that was in the back of the queen’s mind today.

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When it’s poured well – and in Ireland they know no other way – it is indeed a thing of beauty.  In any Irish bar you will see it in various stages of readiness, the bartender taking loving care of each one, slowly filling the glass and waiting for the “surge” to subside, and gently topping up the glass to ensure the cream is in exact proportion to the black below.

Then, with a gentle flourish, the shamrock is sometimes etched into the foam with the final drops.

According to Guinness, it takes 119.53 seconds to make the perfect “double pour” pint. Even at two minutes, it would be worth the wait.

On busy days I have been known to phone ahead to my favorite Irish bar in London and order a round of stout, so that my friends and I could walk in to a warm greeting and a cold glass of beautifully poured ale.

Of course, there is more to stout than alcohol. Every pint contains a large dollop of Ireland. 

If the Blarney Stone had a sense of smell, it would no doubt detect the stuff on most of the puckered-up lips planted on it.

I remember the Northern Ireland firebrand preacher and politician, the Rev Ian Paisley, rounding on a well-known parliamentary reporter after smelling stout (the reporter’s favorite lunch) on his breath. "Sir," he bellowed. "You have been partaking of the devil’s buttermilk."

Another famous son, author James Joyce, called it the “wine of Ireland” – and he certainly had a fondness for wine. The drinking scenes he wrote in “Ulysses” capture well the convivial, boozy atmosphere of Dublin.

SLIDESHOW: A royal visit to Ireland

I remember, though not very well, a long night of drinking stout and Irish whiskey in a posh hotel in Dublin with a group of journalist friends some years ago.

As the Irish say, the “craic” was very good and we lost ourselves in the fun and banter.

It was the manager himself who approached us to ask if we could keep the noise down.

“Why?” we asked.

“Because,” he said patiently, “you’re disturbing the breakfast guests.”

So drinking the black stuff is not without its perils.  But I don’t think alcohol was why the queen – and her husband – both abstained.

I think it’s because royal dignity was at stake.

Her Majesty the Queen simply knew by instinct that a stiff upper lip – topped with an unavoidable creamy froth moustache – would have brought a smile to everyone’s face but hers.

So allow me, ma’am. Cheers.  Slainte.  And down the hatch.

You don’t know what you’re missing.

Related link: Queen's visit closes bloody chapter in Ireland

By Richard Engel, NBC News' Chief Foreign Correspondent

CAIRO – The Libyan border with Egypt is a downright creepy place at 3 a.m.

The border crossing point is a big place.  It looks like a storage lot.  There are about a dozen rundown buildings scattered over several dozen acres of concrete.  Soldiers and police mill around.  Cars come and go.  There are no designated lanes for traffic.  People and vehicles just seem to wander around.  For hundreds of sub-Saharan Africans, this ugly concrete plaza is also a prison.  
 
We arrived in two cars to cross into Egypt from Libya.  A sleepy Egyptian officer motioned for us to get entry stamps in a large building.  I’d been inside it many times before. 
 
The immigration hall looks more or less like any airport – tables are piled high with entry cards to fill out and there are stalls with uniformed officers armed with stamps.  As I waited on line for my passport to be stamped, I heard shouts, then screams. 
 
It sounded like a riot in another room. 

It was a riot.

Police starting running.

Soldiers rushed toward a metal door at the back of the immigration hall.

They bolted the door shut.

The screams on the other side of the door got louder.
 
“What’s going on?” I asked.

“It’s the Africans.  They make problems,” a policeman said.

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There are thousands of sub-Saharan Africans from Chad, Niger, Sudan, Somalia and other poor nations still trapped in Libya.  Many have tried to escape Tripoli on fishing boats to Italy.  Hundreds are also marooned at the Egyptian border. 

They’re stuck because their governments don’t care, or don’t have the resources, to evacuate them. Egyptian authorities won’t let them enter Egypt unless an official from their government guarantees that they won’t stay in the country. So they are stuck at the border.  Some have been here for months. On this night, they were rioting. 
 
I could hear slapping sounds.  It sounded like people behind the bolted door were fighting with fists and sticks. 
 
I went back to the counter to see if I could get an entry stamp and leave.
 
“No, you need to go see an official from general intelligence,” an officer told me.

“Where is he?”

“Through that door.”  He pointed to the metal door.  People were still screaming on the other side of it.

“Really?  That door?”

“That door.”

“Come on.”

“Through that door.”
 
So we waited. 

When the screams died down three of us – our Egypt producer Charlene Gubash, cameraman John Kooistra and myself – unbolted the door.
 
We walked gingerly into a hallway.  A man was mopping blood off the floor.  He was pushing it  along with trash out a door.  A Libyan woman had been stabbed, we were told.  A policeman said she was killed. 

Everyone blamed “the Africans.”  Several Egyptian policemen claimed they have AIDS.  It was clear Egyptian authorities were growing tired of the African refugees on their border. 
 
Stepping over the blood, we found the intelligence officer.  He stamped our passports while smoking a cigarette.  He never mentioned the stabbing minutes earlier outside his office.  It didn’t seem to bother him. 
 
But it did bother a young army officer.  He was furious.  He was screaming at a policeman.

“How come you just closed yourself in your office? Why didn’t you do anything!” he yelled.

“I wasn’t afraid, but I don’t have the staff to protect me,” he said.

“You have authorization to shoot!  But you did nothing!” the army officer shouted at him.

“I wasn’t frightened!” the policeman insisted.  It was now a question of honor and bravery. 
 
We decided to leave for the nine-hour drive to Cairo. We had no access to the refugees to interview them about what had happened.

“The Africans” are still at the border.

Related story from Richard Engel: Dizzying times in the Middle East: Where are we now?

NBC News’ Warangkana Chomchuen
 
BANGKOK, Thailand – It’s official. Thailand will go to the polls on July 3.
 
It’s supposed to be a good news after more than two tumultuous years of political unrest under Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s administration.
 
It is the first election since street demonstrations in Bangkok last year by the anti-government “Red Shirt” protesters, supporters of deposed former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, led to violent clashes with the security forces that left 91 people dead.
 
But can the election heal the deeply polarized country and put it back on track? Will it even actually happen? And if it does happen, will the military allow the “wrong side” to win?

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Military meddling 
Unlike many countries where the military stays put in their barracks, Thailand’s military has a long history of meddling in politics.
 
There have been 18 coup d'états since the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932. The 2006 coup ousted two-time elected former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, now living in exile to avoid corruption charges that he denied.
 
In the 2008 elections, the military generals were accused of bending the arms of smaller parties to side with Abhisit’s Democrat Party to form coalition government.
 
Thaksin’s Puea Thai party, who had 14 more seats, found itself in the opposition. The military’s political maneuvering sent Red Shirt demonstrators, grass-root supporters of Thaksin and anti-coup middle class, out on the streets to voice their frustrations. 
 
Analysts predict a close race this year and that neither the Democrats, nor Puea Thai, will secure a majority of seats in the parliament. Both parties will still have to woo smaller parties to form a coalition government. This, analysts fear, could open the way for military interference and more violence.
 
Word on the street is that Puea Thai, which remains hugely popular among Thailand’s rural poor, will win more seats. But Thaksin’s backers suspect the military will again help keep their favorite Democrats in power, and keep them away from it as long as possible.
 
The accusation isn’t far flung given all the benefits the military has reaped under Abhisit’s administration. Its annual budget since the 2006 coup has swelled to $5 billion, almost double its previous budget, according to a Reuters’ report.
 
The royalist establishment, who maintain their power through the military, and Bangkok elites are more comfortable with British-born, Oxford-educated Abhisit. They do not want their status quo challenged by Thaksin’s supporters and the Red Shirts, whom they said have anti-monarchy, republican agenda.  

With their interests at stake, military leaders are flexing their muscle.
 
It’s been speculated that the clashes along the Thailand-Cambodia border over a disputed Hindu temple may have been escalated on purpose to delay the elections.
 
Critics said that a pervasive sense of crisis has been created to reinforce the military’s image as a benevolent protector and a unifying force of the Thais. 
 
‘Protecting' the monarchy
At home, the army’s commander-in-chief also ordered legal action against the opposition Puea Thai members and Red Shirt leaders for showing disloyalty to the king – a grave accusation in Thailand where the king is highly revered and the monarchy is a sensitive subject. 
 
Thailand’s lèse majesté law prohibits any word or acts that "defames, insults or threatens the king, the queen, the heir to the throne or the regent," and carries a severe penalty of up to 15 years imprisonment. Bails are often denied and the legal process is vague and secretive. 
 
Controversial radio stations, as well as tens of thousands of websites deemed insulting to the royals, have been shut down. “Cyber scout” volunteers were recruited to patrol cyberspace in a hysterical search of culprits.
 
This week an army officer filed another complaint against Somsak Jeamteerasakul, a prominent Thai academic, who proposed a roadmap to reform the monarchy.
 
The military’s aggressive stance in safeguarding the monarchy also comes at a delicate time as the 83-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej has been hospitalized since 2009.
 
Analysts said the military generals, like politicians, take advantage of the public anxiety over the king’s health. The lèse majesté law is used as a political weapon to intimidate political adversaries and suppress freedom of speech.
 
Cementing the strong tie between the military and palace also helps to justify the military’s special role in politics, even permission to stage a coup.
 
Some people like to argue that this is a Thai-style democracy – a euphemism for a system that listens more attentively to the voice of the generals and elites than the majority of the people.
 
This system legitimizes disrespect for the rule of law and outside interference as long as it works to the selected group’s favor.
 
But Thailand’s deep divisions and ongoing political upheavals that portend more violence suggests that this custom-made democracy doesn’t really work.
 
Abhisit said the July 3 elections would prove that Thailand can be governed by law, not by the protests and the military. Everyone is hoping he’s right.

By Miranda Leitsinger, senior writer and editor, msnbc.com

Mahmoud Jibril, prime minister of Libya’s opposition Transitional National Council, said Thursday that fears of Islamic extremists among the rebel ranks and questions about the group’s ability to handle Libya's affairs after Moammar Gadhafi's era has ended are likely the biggest reasons that the U.S. and other countries have not recognized the council as the country's legitimate government.

“They want to make sure that the TNC is capable enough and qualified enough to manage the situation” if the regime falls tomorrow,  said Jibril, who is in Washington this week to press for recognition of the opposition leadership and for the U.S. to release $34 billion in frozen assets. They also “have to make sure that there are no extremist elements involved,” he added.

Jibril made his remarks during a speech at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy and a press briefing afterward. See live tweeting of Jibril's comments

Jibril said there were no al-Qaida fighters on the ground in Libya or among the council ranks. He did note, however, that 11 people who had been fighting in Afghanistan – and later went through a reconciliation between Gadhafi and Islamists – had joined the opposition fighters as “individual citizens, not as a group associated with al-Qaida.”

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An additional concern among potential allies was “a little bit of concern about the day after the regime falls, are we going to face any chaos?” he said.

At a State Department briefing later Thursday, acting deputy spokesman Mark C. Toner said Jibril raised "questions that I think are part of any sound assessment of the Transitional National Council and the opposition in Libya, and are elements that we’ve talked about, both the Secretary has talked about and others have talked about ..."

"Number one is we need to get to know them better. We’ve had representation on the ground in Benghazi ... and we’ve fleshed out our understanding of their needs," he said, according to a transcript of his comments. "We did secure the $25 million in non-lethal aid for them. We are moving forward to unfreeze these assets to get them money."

The council’s finance minister told msnbc.com on Monday that the opposition was running out of cash and had been using funds from the central bank, and other public and private banks, for funding. They need the frozen assets to obtain food, fuel and medicines.

Sen. John Kerry is trying to develop legislation to release around $180 million of the frozen assets, Jibril said, noting the council had also asked if it could even use the funds as a line of credit. 

The council needs $3 billion over the next six months, he said. 

"We are facing a real crisis ... running almost out of money," Jibril said, later stressing that the humanitarian situation in Libya "is a human tragedy in the making."

He gave no timetable for when the conflict might end, but said that rebel fighters are marching to Tripoli, which was “boiling” over the last three days with fighting. 

“The power of right always prevails,” he said. “They have nothing to lose."

Follow Miranda Leitsinger on Facebook

Msnbc.com's Miranda Leitsinger covers an address and Q&A with Dr. Mahmoud Gibril Elwarfally, prime minister of Libya's Transitional National Council, live from the Saban Center for Middle East Policy in Washington, D.C.

Follow along here. If you'd like to add a comment, feel free to. This discussion is moderated.

 

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Every time Abdinasir Ibrahim laces up his running shoes, he risks his life. Ibrahim, a runner who competed in the 5,000 meter race at the Beijing Olympics, is training for the London Olympics on the war-torn streets of Mogadishu, Somalia. 

Jamal Osman, Channel 4 Europe, spent a week filming Ibrahim and his fellow athletes while they dodged bullets and navigated armed roadblocks to get to training.

Read more of Channel 4 News' reporting on Ibrahim here: Somalia: Racing against all odds

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CAIRO – For a third day in a row, Egypt’s Coptic Christians demonstrated in front of the state TV building in central Cairo Tuesday against the military government they blame for failing to prevent the destruction of a church in weekend clashes.  

For Coptic Christians, the attack was just the latest in a series of events that have made them feel increasingly vulnerable, threatened and worried about whether Egypt’s post-revolution future includes them. 

Apparently, a romantic dispute sparked violent clashes on Saturday evening. Security officials said Monday that a Christian woman reportedly had an affair with a Muslim man. She then allegedly disappeared, which led the man to spread rumors that Christian clergy had snatched her and were holding her prisoner at Saint Mena Church in Imbaba, a working-class neighborhood of Cairo, because she converted to Islam.

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Eyewitnesses say the clashes began when a group of Salafists, Muslims who practice Islamic fundamentalism, gathered outside the church. Although the parishioners denied the allegation that the woman was captive inside, the church came under attack and was burned, along with a neighboring church and some Christian-owned buildings. The clash left 12 dead (six Muslims, four Coptic Christians and two others); hundreds were injured and almost 200 arrested.

The Copts insist that the military and state security showed up late and did nothing to intervene. Although the government has transferred those arrested to military court for immediate trial and has decided to activate all laws criminalizing attacks on houses of worship, Copts feel the military government has not doing enough to protect their communities and churches.

'Islamists want to take power'
Egypt is 10 percent Christian, and Copts see the attacks targeting Christians since the revolution as an attempt by Islamists to terrorize them into leaving. Many believe Islamists want a country, and ultimately a region, free of non-Muslims. They fear that if Egyptians elect a predominantly Islamist parliament in September, the new government will widen the scope of Islamic law.

“The revolution was white, and now it has turned black because the Islamists want to take power and control the country,” said protester Marcelino Youssef said during Monday’s protests. “We are waiting to see which way the government will go, in the right direction or the wrong direction. Will the military government remain silent as usual? If they don’t take the right road, Egypt will be lost. There is no safety for Christians here, and the leaders move too slowly to solve the problems.”

Hany Abu Laila was in Saint Mena Church the night it was attacked. He denied reports that Copts fired on Muslims. “Is it logical that we would have a weapons store in a church?” he asked.

He said that dozens of army and security trucks arrived, but did the soldiers little more than observe as Muslim demonstrators hurled Molotov cocktails at the church.

Many among Egypt’s Christian community fear the future and are looking for a way out.

Ibram Anton, a senior merchandiser, has concerns for his family. “I am so afraid now about my future and my daughter’s future. Every Christian is so afraid for the future. I am now seriously finding how to get out of the country because the country will no longer be safe for us,” he said. “Daily, they are attacking us. In my opinion it will not be our country. We will not find jobs. Maybe everything for the Christians will become illegal, like going to church. They have already started to make Christians afraid.”

The military government has agreed to lift a ban on the return of Egyptian militants who fought in Afghanistan against the Russians. “If [the militants] come back, we are sure they will kill the Christians,” Anton said.  

Since the revolution, he said, 90 percent of his friends have decided to emigrate, but none have succeeded so far.

But others vow to stand their ground.

“This is our land and we won’t ever leave it,” Youssef said at the protest. His friends nodded in agreement. “We don’t want to leave Egypt. This is our country and our history.”

NBC News’ Stephanie Gosk has been reporting all week from Abbottabad, Pakistan, the city where Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in a secret raid. In a phone interview Friday, she responded to questions about the town and the local reaction to bin Laden’s death and the revelation that he lived there for years.

What is the reaction to bin Laden’s death in Abbottabad?
We’ve been here all week and have been able to get quite close to bin Laden’s former compound – right outside the walls. And it’s not just the media who are interested, but also the people who live in this town.

What is most interesting is how few people actually believe bin Laden was killed in that house or that he even lived there at all.

It will be interesting over the next few days to see what their reaction is to the news that al-Qaida has put a statement online confirming that bin Laden was killed and calling on Muslims around the world to rise up and avenge his death.

Is there really still that much doubt about Bin Laden even living there?
Well, this country has a strong tradition of conspiracy theories. People here don’t generally believe anything that officials tell them. So it’s not entirely surprising that they aren’t going to believe reports coming out of the White House.

What’s interesting is the reasons why they think the White House is doing this. They will say things like, “Well, Obama wants to be re-elected in the next election, so this was really just a PR stunt.” One person that we spoke to the other day referred back to the Monica Lewinsky scandal and how things at that time seemed to be done to deflect criticism around the world. So they will go out of their way to try to fabricate these elaborate conspiracies as opposed to believing what officials tell them.

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What would it take for them to believe that he was killed?
Well, that was always my next question: What would it take for you to believe he was actually killed by U.S. Navy SEALs in that house? I asked if a photo would do it, and they said, “No, no, of course not. You can doctor a photo.” When I asked about video, they said, “No, you can doctor that, too.” They simply will not believe that he was killed.

With al-Qaida’s statement coming out, it will be interesting to see if people believe it now. But they may come back and say this is just another ploy as well.  

Is Abbottabad really a well-heeled town? Have you seen the town’s alleged golf course?
We didn’t get a chance to check out the golf course. But we did get a sense of what daily life is like.

Despite all the international media coverage, there were a lot of people in this town who just got on with their lives.

In Pakistan, this is a place that people retreat to. It’s up in the mountains, so there is a cool breeze. It’s a good place to escape the hustle-bustle of Islamabad and the heat – so some people have second homes here. There are hotels – it’s just a pretty little town. 

For the people who actually believe that bin Laden was living here amongst them and was killed here, they are shocked that it could happen in their midst. It’s a place that is known not to have much of a radical element. And in Pakistan over the last few years, there are very few places where you can say that.  

We are hearing that the CIA had a safe house there, do the neighbors say that they noticed anything?
We haven’t heard from anybody that they were aware of monitoring or intelligence gathering on the ground. There is nothing that led them to any suspicions of that.

But quite honestly there was nothing to make them suspicious of the house down the road. Now people will say that it had high walls and barbed wire – which is a little unusual. And they didn’t see the women come out of the house – but that’s fairly typical. There are plenty of families where women don’t leave the house – so that wasn’t all that strange. People here didn’t really notice anything that completely out of the ordinary.

That’s really the big question: What did they know? And with that military complex down the road, how did they not know that bin Laden was in their midst? 

Does that suspicion of officials and the U.S. lend itself to suspicions about the Pakistani military, too? That they had some hand in hiding bin Laden?
No, I don’t think they are suspicious of the military. What we have heard – almost across the board – is criticism of the civilian government and the fact that they are seen as puppets of the United States.

There is also embarrassment among the Pakistani military that this raid took place at all. That U.S. Navy SEALs snuck in under their radar, hugging the mountainous terrain, killed bin Laden and then left without them ever knowing it happened until they received a phone call from U.S. officials. 

That has embarrassed and angered the military in this country – and the people themselves.

Where there any protests there today? 
There was a small protest in Abbottabad. There were maybe 400-500 people and it was organized by a radical Islamic group. It was all men. This is a town of 100,000 people – so it wasn’t really that big.

But their message was a familiar one that we have heard all over the country over and over: that their sovereignty was violated by this raid and that President Asif Ali Zardari is a puppet of the U.S.

Is there any sense of relief that bin Laden is gone?
I think there is some relief here in Abbottabad and across the country as well. Because over the last couple of years al-Qaida has turned its attention to Pakistan and conducted a number of attacks – including deadly suicide attacks in all of Pakistan’s major cities.

So people’s tolerance of al-Qaida and their violence has really diminished. So there is real anger there over the deaths in this country and I think that killing bin Laden will bring people some relief. But I think they really want the attacks to stop.

Related links: From NBC's Richard Engel: Bin Laden was a 'compassionate martyr' and Hitler loved music...

By Richard Engel, NBC News chief foreign correspondent

BENGHAZI, Libya – Al-Qaida’s official statement today announcing Osama bin Laden’s death immediately reminded me of a scene from Mel Brooks' classic comedy “The Producers.” 

In the movie (I never saw the play) con men movie producers search for the worst, most offensive play they can imagine, so that it will flop and they won't have to pay their investors. 

The producers find it in a glowing tribute to Adolf Hitler, the misunderstood artist, a man of culture, panache and style. “Hitler was a great dancer,” the playwright tells the producers. 

They buy his play on the spot.

Hitler, according to his many biographers, also loved music. He was a fan of oil paintings, too. But who cares if the 20th century’s most vile human could waltz like Fred Astaire?
 
Al-Qaida’s statement today was equally misguided. It could have been written by the same man who loved Hitler, the dancer.  

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The statement began by saying of bin Laden, “You Lived a Compassionate Life and You Died a Martyr.”
 
Compassionate? 

It's not the first quality that comes to mind.
 
The statement continues like a love poem, extolling the kinder, gentler side of the world’s deadliest terrorist. It describes bin Laden, on the run for a decade, not as a fugitive, but as a traveler spreading his message like a monk, wandering the earth in search of justice.
 
“Congratulations to the Ummah of Islam (the Islamic community) with the martyrdom of her pious son Usama; as after a life full of work and efforts, determination and patience, encouragement and jihad, generosity and open-handedness, migration and traveling, advices and good management, wisdom and practicality.”
 
Al-Qaida also tried to explain away the fact that American troops were able to gun down its leader face to face.
 
“The Americans were able to kill Usama, that is not shameful or disgraceful, and wouldn’t the men and heroes be killed except in the battlefields. Every fate has an ending, but can the Americans with their media, agents, machinery, soldiers, intelligence and forces kill what Shaykh Usama lived for and killed for the cause of?”
 
Osama bin Laden is dead. Al-Qaida wants the world to remember him as a compassionate philosopher – a Socrates killed by the state for refusing the status quo – not as what he was, a mass murderer of innocent civilians.  

By Martin Fletcher, NBC News Correspondent

On paper, it sounds marvelous; but peace in our time, it isn't. Peace, that is, among the Palestinians.
 
To agree to a unity deal between his Fatah movement and rival Hamas, West Bank leader and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wanted the two factions to combine their security services into one. A state, Abbas says, can't have two militaries, each loyal to a different master. But Hamas refused and the compromise is that each Palestinian party will have its own security services.

In other words, while agreeing to unite after nearly five years of bitter conflict, including an all-out war in Gaza in May 2007, each side remains prepared for the day after.

But with the Palestinian Authority building the institutions of a state, and collecting guarantees from dozens of countries that they will support the Palestinian application for independence and a full seat in the United Nations in September, it is imperative that Palestinians are united. Or at least, appear so.

After all, Israel's argument against a Palestinian state, for now, has been that the Palestinians are so divided that they can't claim to be a responsible member of the family of nations.

The agreement between Fatah and Hamas scuppers that objection.

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So now Israel has raised another objection. They say Hamas is a terrorist organization, recognized as such by Europe and the United States, is sworn to Israel's destruction, and so cannot be part of a legitimate national government. And if it is, that government should not be recognized.

It’s either peace with Israel or peace with Hamas, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said within two hours of the unity agreement's announcement. Abbas chose Hamas.

The problem with Israel's objections is that the Palestinians have been very successful at selling Prime Minister Salam Fayad's construction of Palestinian institutions and getting the world to agree to one key point: The Palestinians want to reform and only Israel stands in the way.

However, with the assassination of Osama bin Laden, the Palestinians, in this case Hamas, shot themselves in the foot allowing Israel to claim, as its ambassadors have been told to do worldwide at every opportunity, that despite appearances, nothing's changed. Hamas could not have been more helpful to Israel.

Ismail Haniya, Hamas leader in the Gaza strip, condemned America for assassinating bin Laden, calling him "a holy Arab warrior."

Israel poured oil onto this fire by broadcasting a video on Israel’s channel 10 showing an imam in Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque eulogizing bin Laden. He told the worshippers: "The dogs of the West murdered one of the lions of Islam."

The dogs would be America. The lion of Islam would be bin Laden. The speaker added about President Barack Obama: "You should know that you will soon swing from a rope."

Assuming the video is genuine, and nobody so far has doubted it, there must be a lot of red faces in Ramallah. This is not the face of Palestine that Fatah leaders want the world to see.