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Official Pakistan obstructionism and harassment, an endemic problem in Pakistan, has increased to the point where it is significantly impairing mission operations and program implementation,” said the report, which was based on visits to the US Embassy in Islamabad and consulates in Karachi, Peshawar and Lahore between January and mid-February.

The 76-page report, labeled “sensitive but unclassified,” described the harassment as “deliberate, willful and systematic” and said ending it should be a top priority in high-level discussions with Pakistani authorities.

The report said the harassment included delays in getting visas; blocked shipments for aid programs and construction projects; denials of in-country travel requests; and surveillance of and interference with mission employees and contractors.

Extensive parts of report’s section on harassment are blacked out, including all details of specific incidents as well as the State Department’s response to the findings.

It noted that US diplomats and other government workers “have long been subjected to unusual, government-initiated obstructionism and harassment” but that it had gotten far worse.

“That harassment has reached new levels of intensity, however, after the events of 2011,” the report said.

And it maintained that the US and its diplomats were being singled out.

“While other diplomatic missions have experienced similar treatment, the United States is clearly the principal target,” the report said.

n addition to the November airstrikes and Pakistan’s ignorance of the bin Laden raid, which the report described in unusually blunt terms as evidence of “both Pakistani government incompetence and its inability to detect or defend against a military intervention,” relations were harmed further by the killing of two Pakistanis by a CIA contractor in January 2011 and a September attack on the US Embassy in Kabul by extremists suspected of links with Pakistani intelligence, the report said.

“Events of the past year have rocked the US-Pakistani relationship and fundamentally altered the assumptions on which US engagement with Pakistan has been based since 2009,” it said.

Egyptians are awaiting the delayed results of the presidential run-off election held earlier this month.

The results are due in the coming hours, after the election commission heard appeals by the two candidates.

Mohammed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood and former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq have both claimed victory and vowed to form unity governments.

Supporters of both men have been demonstrating in recent days amid increasing political polarisation.

On Friday, the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (Scaf) called on supporters of both candidates to accept the result.

The election commission has said that it will announce the official results by 15:00 local time (13:00 GMT) on Sunday.

Muslim Brotherhood supporters are maintaining a vigil in Tahrir Square where on Friday tens of thousands of protesters gathered to denounce a move last week by Egypt's ruling generals to seize sweeping powers.

The BBC's Jon Leyne in the capital, Cairo, says there are fears that in the current atmosphere, the final announcement might only make matters worse.

A pro-Ahmed Shafiq demonstration also took place on Saturday in the Nasr City neighbourhood of Cairo.

"When we decided to take to the streets, we're not just one, two or three million, we're 80 million. The only difference is that we're waiting for the military council to give its final word," one Shafiq supporter, Doaa, told the Reuters news agency.

Pottery 20,000 years old found in China

Pottery fragments found in a south China cave have been confirmed to be 20,000 years old, making them the oldest known pottery, archaeologists say.
THE findings, in the journal Science, add to recent efforts that have dated pottery piles in East Asia to more than 15,000 years ago, refuting conventional theories that the invention of pottery correlates to the period about 10,000 years ago when humans moved from being hunter-gathers to farmers.

The research by Chinese and American scientists also pushes the emergence of pottery back to the last ice age, which might provide new explanations for the creation of pottery, said Gideon Shelach, chair of the Louis Frieberg Center for East Asian Studies at The Hebrew University in Israel.

"The focus of research has to change," Shelach, who is not involved in the research project in China, said.

In an accompanying Science article, Shelach wrote such research efforts "are fundamental for a better understanding of socio-economic change (25,000 to 19,000 years ago) and the development that led to the emergence of sedentary agricultural societies".

He said the disconnection between pottery and agriculture might shed light on human development in the region.

Wu Xiaohong, professor of archaeology and museology at Peking University and the lead author of the Science article that details the radiocarbon dating efforts, told AP her team was eager to build on the research.

"We are very excited about the findings. The paper is the result of efforts done by generations of scholars," Wu said. "Now we can explore why there was pottery in that particular time, what were the uses of the vessels, and what role they played in the survival of human beings."

The ancient fragments were discovered in the Xianrendong cave in south China's Jiangxi province, excavated in the 1960s and again in the 1990s.