The United States is aiming to send 20,000 to 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan by the beginning of next summer, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Saturday.
   Afghanistan welcomed the US pledge but the Taliban warned Washington its forces would be ‘cruelly defeated’ as the Soviets were in the 1980s.
   The statements came one day after the top US military officer said that tens of thousands of new troops could be sent to Afghanistan by next summer to help Kabul combat a Taliban-led insurgency that has gained pace in recent years.
   Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, put the total deployment at between 20,000 and 30,000 troops. If the Pentagon opts for the high end of the range, the number of US troops here would nearly double.
   Afghan foreign ministry spokesman Sultan Ahmad Baheen said Kabul hoped the additional US forces would be sent to the volatile south and areas along the eastern border with Pakistan, where Taliban fighters are the most active.
   ‘We welcome the increase in US troops in Afghanistan. We have, however, two main demands,’ Baheen said.
   ‘The first is that these forces should be deployed in places where they are needed — particularly in (southern) Helmand (province) and along our eastern borders, from where terrorists infiltrate into our country,’ he said.
   ‘Secondly, this increase should help intensify the training and equipping of Afghan national security forces so they are able to better contribute to the fight against terror and defend the country.’
   Remnants of the Taliban, who were ousted from government in a US-led invasion in late 2001, have stepped up attacks in recent years, with 2008 the bloodiest year yet of the seven-year-long insurgency.
   Afghan officials say the fighters have set up safe havens in Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt on the border, and accuse Islamabad of not doing enough to put a stop to cross-border operations against Afghan and foreign forces here.
   A spokesman for the Taliban dismissed the US troop pledge, saying it would be as useless as a similar ‘surge’ by the Soviets in the 1980s, and would only provide the insurgents with more targets.
   ‘They now want to send more troops to Afghanistan.... The Russians also sent that many troops but were badly defeated,’ said the spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, referring to Moscow’s doomed decade-long occupation of Afghanistan.
   ‘When the US increases its troop levels to that of the Russians, they will also be cruelly defeated,’ warned Ahmadi, who claims to speak on behalf of fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
   ‘More troops — that means there will be more targets for the Taliban,’ he said by telephone from an unknown location.
   US president-elect Barack Obama has pledged to withdraw forces from Iraq and redeploy them to Afghanistan as part of his plan to tackle militancy and instability in south and central Asia.
   General David McKiernan, the US commander in Afghanistan, had asked for more than 20,000 extra US soldiers to counter the rise in insurgent violence, seven years after US forces invaded the country to force the Taliban from power.

Israel on Sunday mulled launching an offensive on Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip as violence simmered in the impoverished enclave days after a truce between the Jewish state and the Islamists ended.
   The government of interim prime minister Ehud Olmert debated during its weekly cabinet meeting whether to launch major military strikes against the besieged Palestinian coastal strip.
   ‘A responsible government is not eager to launch war but does not avoid it either, therefore we will take the necessary steps,’ Olmert said as the meeting began.
   Earlier, a senior Israeli defence official said that a major military confrontation in the territory was unavoidable as militants again targeted southern Israel with rockets.
   ‘It is obvious where we are heading in Gaza. The situation is intolerable but clear. The army’s considerations are the only thing that is deciding when events will unfold,’ the defence official said.
   Tensions in Gaza have steadily risen since Friday, when Hamas said it would not renew a six-month truce with Israel.
   Gaza militants have launched several dozen rockets, causing some damage and slightly wounding a handful of civilians, and Israel has retaliated with air strikes, killing one militant and wounding three other Palestinians.
   On Sunday morning, Palestinian militants said they fired 10 rockets and mortar rounds into southern Israel. One scored a direct hit on a house in the hard-hit town of Sderot, lightly wounding one person, rescue services said.
   Shortly afterwards, Israeli warplanes targeted rocket launchers about to fire projectiles, an army spokesman said. No injuries were reported.
   Some key Israeli ministers have called for tough military action against Hamas in response to the violence, which comes less than two months before a general election in Israel.
   ‘The second Israel comes under fire we should fire back intensively to reduce their capabilities,’ the trade and industry minister, Eli Yishai, said, calling for retaliatory strikes against rocket launchers and for militant leaders in Gaza to be targeted.
   Vice premier Haim Ramon said that Israel must dethrone the Islamist movement that seized control in Gaza in June 2007 after ousting forces loyal to secular Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, whose writ today is effectively confined to the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
   ‘What we want is to end the Hamas regime in Gaza,’ Ramon told public radio. ‘The ceasefire has strengthened Hamas and weakened us both militarily and diplomatically, and therefore we must draw the conclusions and change our policy.’

Thai premier Abhisit Vejjajiva’s newly unveiled cabinet set to work Sunday on building reconciliation and reviving the economy, despite the threat of protests over some appointments.
   Key ministers from the Democrat Party met to discuss policy matters, a day before an official swearing in ceremony on Monday in front of the revered king.
   ‘After the royal audience tomorrow, the prime minister may call for another discussion of government policy before the cabinet meet for the first time on Tuesday to approve the policies,’ said deputy interior minister Thaworn Senneam.
   The cabinet list was announced Saturday after King Bhumibol Adulyadej signed a royal command approving the ministers, appointed after Abhisit won a parliamentary vote to bring a Democrat-led coalition into power.
   Of the 36 cabinet posts, 24 ministers are serving in government for the first time.
   Heading the economic team is finance minister Korn Chatikavanij , an Oxford contemporary of 44-year-old Abhisit. The minister formerly worked for investment bank JPMorgan Chase.
   But amid a global financial downturn exacerbated by political turmoil in the kingdom, business leaders have criticised the choice of other economic ministers tasked with reviving the country’s fortunes.
   On Friday members of the business community said they were disappointed by the choice of industry and commerce ministers. Local media said the grumbles prompted a last minute switch to Charnchai Chairungruang as industry
   minister.

A Saudi court has rejected a plea to divorce an eight-year-old girl married off by her father to a man who is 58, saying the case should wait until the girl reaches puberty, a lawyer involved said.
   ‘The judge has dismissed the plea (filed by the mother) because she does not have the right to file such a case, and ordered that the plea should be filed by the girl herself when she reaches puberty,’ lawyer Abdullah Jtili said in a telephone interview after Saturday’s court decision.
   The divorce plea was filed in August by the girl’s divorced mother with a court at Unayzah, 220 kilometres north of Riyadh just after the marriage contract was signed by the father and the groom. ‘She doesn’t know yet that she has been married,’ Jtili said then of the girl who was about to begin her fourth year at primary school.
   Relatives said that the marriage had not yet been consummated, and that the girl continued to live with her mother. They said that the father had set a verbal condition by which the marriage is not consummated for another 10 years, when the girl turns 18.
   The father had agreed to marry off his daughter for an advance dowry of 30,000 riyals (8,000 dollars), as he was apparently facing financial problems, they said.
   The father was in court and he remained adamant in favour of the marriage, they added.
   Lawyer Jtili said he was going to appeal the verdict at the court of cassation, the supreme court in the ultra-conservative kingdom which applies Islamic Sharia law in its courts.
   Arranged marriages involving pre-adolescents are occasionally reported in the Arabian Peninsula, including in Saudi Arabia where the strict conservative Wahabi version of Sunni Islam holds sway and polygamy is common.
   In Yemen in April, another girl aged eight was granted a divorce after her unemployed father forced her to marry a
   man of 28.

Japanese Emperor Akihito turns 75 this week with worries mounting over his succession in the world’s oldest monarchy and with the country’s stressed crown princess entering her sixth year as a recluse.
   Akihito, who in 2009 will mark 20 years since he ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne, has cancelled a customary annual news conference ahead of his birthday Tuesday due to health problems.
   The emperor, whose father Hirohito was revered as a demigod until Japan’s defeat in Second World War, will instead issue a statement expressing his ‘feelings’ on his birthday.
   His plight has renewed public attention on stress among the royals. Crown Princess Masako has skipped most public duties since late 2003 as the former career woman struggles to adjust to the tradition-bound palace.
   On December 11, Imperial Household Agency chief Shingo Haketa surprised the public by going on the record about the emperor’s distress.
   The emperor has seemed ‘worried for the past several years about the future imperial line and various other issues concerning the imperial household, which never leave his mind,’ Haketa said, while noting it was his personal view.
   Masako gave birth to a girl in 2001 after eight years of marriage with Crown Prince Naruhito.
   The birth fuelled a divisive dispute on whether the nation should allow a woman to sit on the Chrysanthemum Throne, which traditionalists say has an unbroken male line of succession.
   The succession dispute subsided in 2006 when the wife of the crown prince’s younger brother gave birth to a boy, the first prince in 40 years born to the royal family.
   But experts say a single boy cannot stem the succession crisis in the 2,000-year-old monarchy as all other children in the broader imperial families are women and become commoners upon their marriage.
   ‘Imperial families are supposed to have some spare blood in store,’ said Tsuneyasu Takeda, a descendant of one of 11 families stripped of their royal status after the war under the US occupation.
   ‘We are in a very risky situation, like driving a car without any insurance,’ he said. ‘It is easy to imagine that this has caused stress on the emperor.’
   Shinji Yamashita, a former official of the Imperial Household Agency, said: ‘Politicians don’t bother to think about the future of the royal family. They only try to get over the imminent problems.’
   ‘They know they can’t win votes by talking about the imperial system,’ said Yamashita, who publishes a quarterly magazine on royal matters.
   On December 9, doctors for the emperor announced that they had found traces of bleeding in his stomach and duodenum that may have been caused by physical and mental problems.
   ‘His Majesty has long endured mental suffering and anguish. My impression is that this is a major problem,’ medical supervisor Ichiro Kanazawa told reporters, saying his tight schedule was not solely to blame.
   On the same day — which was Masako’s 45th birthday — the medical team for the princess separately said she was steadily recovering but admitted that she had had a ‘large’ amount of stress which required years of treatment.
   ‘We would like to ask for humane, warm consideration’ for her, doctors said in a paper issued to the press to explain her condition.
   Takeda, the descendant of a former royal, said pressure to produce a male heir made the princess sick but that her condition worsened due to magazine articles depicting her as ‘a slacker’ for having fun while avoiding public duties.
   Imperial agency chief Haketa said the emperor and Empress Michiko ‘seemed deeply hurt’ by speculation that the imperial household itself is causing stress to the princess or that she is seeking a more ‘worthwhile’ job.
   Japan’s emperor enjoys wide respect among the general public, although the post-World War II constitution bars him from holding any political role, defining him as the ‘symbol’ of the nation.
   Hiroshi Takahashi, an expert on imperial matters, said Akihito developed the role of the emperor as symbol by carrying out welfare work and palace rituals.
   ‘The emperor is desperate to pass that onto the next generation, while the crown prince puts priority on treatment of the illness’ of Masako, he said.

Taliban militants have killed two Afghan men in Pakistan’s troubled tribal belt, accusing them of spying for US forces operating across the border, officials said Sunday.
   The executions were the latest in a string of similar killings in the rugged frontier region, a haven for al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents intent on destabilising both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
   The militants dumped the bodies of the men, brothers from the neighbouring Afghan province of Khost, in the village of Shiratala in the troubled North Waziristan tribal district.
   ‘Both men were shot dead,’ a security official said.
   ‘They were spies. They had been spying for US forces,’ said a note found near the bodies early Sunday, according to officials.
   Militants have killed dozens of local tribesmen and Afghan nationals on charges of spying, mainly for the Pakistani government or US forces operating in Afghanistan.
   Pakistan’s lawless tribal region has been wracked by violence since hundreds of Taliban and al-Qaeda rebels sought refuge in the area after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan toppled the hardline Taliban regime in late 2001.

The delayed summit of Southeast Asian nations due late February in Thailand may be rescheduled as some leaders are unable to make it, Singapore’s foreign minister George Yeo said in remarks published on Sunday.
   ‘I thought we had settled it in Jakarta a few days ago, but now I’m told that there are some leaders who can’t make it,’ Yeo was quoted as saying in Singapore weekly The Sunday Times.
   He did not mention the leaders who are not able to attend the February 24-26 summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Bangkok but said alternative dates being considered include late January or early February.
   Thailand, which currently holds the rotating chairmanship of the 10-member bloc, said last week it will host the summit from February 24-26 at Government House.
   The ASEAN meeting was delayed from mid-December amid political turmoil in Thailand, where crowds occupied the capital’s airports in a protest against the ruling party loyal to ousted former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
   The protests ended when a court stripped the prime minister, Somchai Wongsawat, of his position and disbanded the pro-Thaksin People Power Party in a vote fraud case.
   Thailand was forced to delay the ASEAN meeting until March because of the blockade of Bangkok’s airports which left 350,000 travellers stranded.

Twelve staff at a prominent newspaper and magazine publisher were injured on Sunday when they were attacked by dozens of Maoist activists angered by critical coverage, an editor said.
   Former rebel Maoists now govern Nepal after winning elections earlier this year, but they face criticism for the violent activities of their youth wing, the Young Communist League.
   ‘While beating our staff they warned us not to write any anti-Maoist stories,’ said Kiran Nepal, an editor with the Himal media group, which produces one weekly English-language newspaper and two news magazines.
   Around 50 Maoist-affiliated trade unionists and members of the feared youth wing stormed into the media group’s headquarters, attacked staff and vandalised property, Nepal said.

A last-gasp compromise will allow the future of non-US foreign troops in Iraq to be put to the vote in parliament on Monday, the final day before lawmakers start their year-end break, MPs said.
   With the troops’ UN mandate due to expire on December 31, there is too little time to push through a bill, so parliament will vote on a simple resolution allowing the government to finalise new arrangements.
   ‘The Iraqi parliament will vote tomorrow on a motion authorising the government to sign a deal with non-US nations’ forces to determine the time of their departure, which should be before the end of July 2009,’ Ali al-Adeeb, a prominent MP in the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, told reporters.
   ‘Tomorrow parliament will vote on a motion which will give the government authorisation to deal with the case of non-US troops in Iraq,’ Ahmad Nour, an MP from the Kurdish Alliance said.
   The plan to vote on a resolution on Monday was drawn up after confusion reigned in parliament on Saturday over whether a vote had taken place on a bill initially intended to set new rules for the presence of non-US foreign troops.
   Bills, or draft laws, require two readings in parliament, a process taking at least a week.
   On Wednesday, the first reading of the bill took place amid uproar in the aftermath of the protest by an Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at visiting US president George W Bush last Sunday.
   Mahmud Mashhadani, the speaker of parliament, announced his resignation during Wednesday’s row, but later retracted it.
   When discussion of the bill resumed on Saturday, some MPs thought they were voting against the proposed law on non-US forces, while others thought the vote was to invalidate the decision made during Wednesday’s rowdy session.
   The United States, which supplies 95 per cent of foreign troops in Iraq, has already signed a Status of Forces Agreement with the Baghdad government, under which its combat forces can remain in the country until the end of 2011.
   Monday’s decision by parliament will mostly affect the presence of the British forces, whose 4,100 men and women are concentrated in the south of the country.
   Australia, Estonia, Romania and El Salvador also have small numbers of troops in Iraq.
   The British foreign ministry said in London on Saturday that Maliki had agreed with the prime minister, Gordon Brown, in Baghdad last week that British troops would stay in Iraq until the end of May.
   ‘We have worked closely with the government of Iraq to ensure that there is a firm legal basis for the presence of our forces in 2009,’ a spokesman said.

Street violence raged into a third week in Athens as protests sparked by the fatal shooting of a teenager fused with political tension hours from the Greek parliament’s budget vote Sunday.
   Clashes between youths and the police extended deep into the night after hundreds of people gathered late Saturday in the capital’s Exarchia district, at the site of the December 6 shooting of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos.
   In Athens, protesters occupying the Athens Polytechnic university hurled firebombs and rocks at the police who responded with tear gas, while clashes there and around the country saw police cars, a government building and banks targeted with the unrest spreading to the port city of Piraeus and the island of Crete.
   Unions piled extra pressure on the right-wing government ahead of the parliamentary budget vote.
   Under-fire prime minister Costas Karamanlis’ administration wants to reduce Greece’s national debt — which this year stands at 93.9 per cent of GDP, one of the highest in Europe.
   The conservative leader said last week that Greece expects to pay about 12 billion euros (16 billion dollars) in 2009 to service its debt, amounting to over 19 percent of its revenue and nearly five percent of its gross domestic product.
   The depth of anti-government sentiment witnessed over the past fortnight has also begun to bite in opinion polls published Sunday.
   Pollsters Public Issue have the socialist opposition taking a lead on 38.5 per cent as against Karamanlis’ New Democracy, with 32.5 per cent, according to the liberal Kathimerini newspaper.
   Socialist leader Georges Papandreou’s approval rating has also overtaken that of Karamanlis, the poll said.
   In the centre-left Vima, a similar pattern of voting intentions was recorded by Kapa Research.
   Karamanlis — whose government relies on a fragile single-seat majority in the 300-deputy parliament — has consistently shrugged off opposition calls to resign, announcing financial measures to support the business and tourism sectors hard-hit by the unrest.
   Hundreds of shops and banks in Athens and elsewhere have sustained damage in street violence.

The US capital is buzzing with preparations for president-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration on January 20, set to draw a huge crowd of millions.
   The historical inauguration of the first African-American president of the United States, set to take place in one month, is expected to draw an unprecedented five million people, swelling the city’s population of 600,000.
   ‘I think it’s not an exaggeration that you could fill’ the Mall — the grassy strip of land leading to the US Capitol, the Washington mayor, Adrian Fenty, told local TV station WUSA.
   Although various estimates abound, officials refuse to confirm expected crowd numbers.
   ‘We have seen nothing to suggest that there will be four million people, but if there are that many, we will be prepared to deal with them,’ said Special Agent Malcolm Wiley of the Secret Service, tasked with overseeing security for the inauguration.
   ‘We have seen how (Obama) can attract crowds.’
   Washington’s police force will double to 8,000 and 11,500 troops will help monitor the crowds.
   The delivery of porta-potties has made headlines in local papers, which crunched numbers to come up with crowd estimates.
   ‘Here’s the number everyone has been waiting for: there will be 5,000 porta-potties available on the Mall and along the parade route on Inauguration Day,’ The Washington Post exclaimed.
   ‘If officials ordered the portable restrooms based on how many people they expect that day, then figure on crowds of 500,000 to 1.5 million people.’
   The turnout for Obama’s swearing-in is expected to shatter the last record inaugural for Lyndon Johnson in 1965, which drew 1.2 million attendees, following John F Kennedy’s assassination.
   By contrast, president George W Bush’s inaugurations each drew about 300,000 people, according to Rebecca Pawlowski, a spokeswoman for the group Destination DC, which encourages tourism to the city.
   On January 17, Obama will begin a three-day trip echoing his role model US Civil War-era president Abraham Lincoln.

Mauritania’s military junta freed ousted elected president Sidi Ould Sheikh Abdallahi from house arrest on Sunday after weeks of international pressure.
   ‘President Sidi has been freed,’ the source said, after the junta that seized power in the Saharan nation on August 6 came under international pressure to end his confinement.
   Four military vehicles picked up Abdallahi in his home village of Lemden, 250 kilometres south of Nouakchott, and drove him to his private residence in the capital in the early hours of the morning, the source said.
   ‘The soldiers dropped him off at his place, his private residence in Nouakchott,’ the security source said. ‘He now is free to move.’
   But in an apparent show of defiance at the generals who ousted him 15 months after his election, Abdallahi promptly turned around and returned to Lemden, a former senior official who is close to him said.
   ‘The president used a personal vehicle to go back to Lemden,’ the former official said, asserting that Abdallahi had been driven to the capital by the military ‘against his will’.
   ‘He did not have time to say goodbye to his extended family in Lemden,’ he said. ‘He wished to return to prepare his return to Nouakchott, serenely, according to his own agenda.’

Britain marked the 20th anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing Sunday, recalling the night a US-bound jet was blown up over a quiet Scottish town, killing 270 people.
   Memorial services were scheduled from 1400 GMT in Lockerbie, a close-knit community of some 4,000 people, which saw 259 passengers and crew killed and 11 more dead on the ground as flaming debris from the plane crushed homes.
   Relatives of those who were killed were expected to attend a service at London’s Heathrow Airport, where Pan Am Flight 103 took off on the night of December 21, 1988, mostly carrying Americans home for Christmas.
   Ceremonies were also to take place in the United States, including at Syracuse University in New York State. A total of 35 Syracuse students coming home after studying in London and Florence, Italy, were killed on board the flight.
   Barely 40 minutes into the flight to New York, the Boeing 747 was ripped apart by a bomb in the luggage hold at an altitude of 9,400 metres, killing everyone on board.
   Lockerbie residents recall the explosion turning the sky orange and wreckage, fuel and bodies raining down.

Malian troops clashed at the weekend with Tuareg rebels, leaving at least 25 people dead, including five civilians, according to disputed tolls Sunday from both sides and an aid worker.
   Mali’s defence ministry said nine soldiers and 11 rebels had been killed in the fighting Saturday near the Nampala military outpost in the north of the country. It said 12 soldiers were also wounded in the clashes.
   A source close to Tuareg rebel leader Ibrahim Ag Bahanga said earlier that at least 20 Malian soldiers had been killed.
   ‘On the army side there were more than 20 dead. We regret that, but it was them or us. We have wounded on our side,’ the source stated without mentioning any rebel dead.
   An official from an international aid organisation, who requested anonymity on ‘security’ grounds, said at least five civilians had been killed.

The family of an Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at the US president, George W Bush, demonstrated for a second day on Saturday to demand his release from custody.
   Muntazer al-Zaidi’s brother, Durgham, said that the family intended to continue its protest in a park near the central Baghdad government compound where he is being held around the clock until he is freed.
   ‘We will stay here until he is released even if the military tries to remove us,’ Durgham said.
   Iraqi troops halted a previous attempt by the family to hold an overnight sit-in on Friday.
   Durgham said that the family had been able to talk to Muntazer on the telephone and that he had allayed their previous fears about his treatment.
   ‘He is in good health and does not have a broken arm. He just has some blows to his face,’ he said. Durgham had said on Monday that his brother had sustained a broken arm and ribs after being hit by Iraqi security forces.
   Muntazer’s investigating judge Dhiya al-Kenani said on Thursday that the 29-year-old television reporter was in good health and being well treated.