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Europe to contribute 5,000 extra troops to Afghanistan | World news | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

  • Barack Obama today won agreement for substantial Nato troop reinforcements in Afghanistan, when nine European nations, including Britain, said they would send up to 5,000 troops and logistical help ahead of the presidential elections there in August. Britain is to send 900 extra troops almost immediately, who will remain until October.
  • News of the reinforcements came as Nato named the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, as its next leader after overcoming Turkish opposition.
  • David Miliband the foreign secretary said the surprisingly large number of troops offered was proof of a palpable "Obama effect."
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  • Britain currently has 8,100 troops in Afghanistan, and is separately considering a larger permanent deployment, which may be facilitated by the imminent drawdown in Iraq. The British contribution to the reinforcements includes 275 troops who were due to return to the UK in July but will now stay until October
  • The countries agreeing to contribute further help, according to European diplomats, include Poland – which is to send as many as 600 troops – Spain, Croatia, Greece and the Netherlands. Germany is expected to confirm that it will be sending extra troops to the largely peaceful north of Afghanistan for the election on 22 August.
  • France is sending a further 150 military police to help train Afghan civilian police, arguing that last year it announced a large extra deployment.
  • America and Britain had become increasingly frustrated at the 28 Nato countries's unwillingness to commit troops to serious fighting against the Taliban in southern and eastern Afghanistan. While yesterday's temporary additions do not mean that Nato countries have committed themselves to a long-term increase in forces, the US claimed there was a definite change of mood.
  • Before the troops announcement was made, the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, hastily agreed to review a draft law that allegedly legitimises rape inside marriage for Afghanistan's Shia minority. The review follows phone calls yesterday from Brown and the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, as well as warnings from Canada that it will withdraw its troops if the law is passed.
  • Karzai has agreed to refer the law back to the Ministry of Justice and has committed himself to veto the law if it infringes the human rights of women. He protested yesterday that the law had been misinterpreted by western media and that it did not ban women from leaving their home without the permission of their husband.
  • Obama is committing an extra 21,000 troops, and possibly another 10,000 later in the year.
  • in a sign of the persisting tensions inside the 28-nation alliance, the summit at one stage appeared deadlocked over the appointment of Rasmussen, after objections from the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
  • Turkey had rejected the nomination because of Rasmussen's defence of Danish newspaper cartoons depicting Muhammad in 2005.
  • Later, however, Turkey dropped its objections and it was announced that Nato leaders agreed unanimously to appoint Rasmussen as the next head of the alliance.
Argos Media

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Kyrgyz MPs vote to shut US base - 0 views

  • Kyrgyzstan's parliament has voted overwhelmingly in favour of closing a strategic US air base that supports US and Nato operations in Afghanistan.
  • Mr Bakiyev announced the closure plan earlier this month in Moscow, where Russia pledged $2bn (£1.4bn) in aid.
  • Bishkek denies any link between the move to shut the base and Moscow's aid. The president said earlier this month that the US refusal to pay an adequate rent was behind the decision.
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  • Thousands of US soldiers pass through the Manas base every month on their way in and out of Afghanistan.
  • It is also home to the large tanker aircraft that are used for in-air refuelling of fighter planes on combat missions, and it serves as a key supply hub.
  • For Russia, on the other hand, its closure would be a diplomatic victory as it seeks to reassert its influence in former Soviet republics, analysts say.
  • "I think that the Russians are trying to have it both ways with respect to Afghanistan in terms of Manas," US defence secretary Robert Gates said on Thursday, on his way to Krakow to meet his Polish counterpart.
  • "On one hand you're making positive noises about working with us in Afghanistan and on the other hand you're working against us in terms of that airfield which is clearly important to us."
  • On Tuesday, the US commander for the Middle East and Central Asia, General David Petraeus, held talks in Uzbekistan, which has rail links with Afghanistan. The US has already reached deals with Russia and Kazakhstan to send non-military cargo to Afghanistan using their rail networks, but the supplies would have to go through Uzbekistan. The US used to have an air base in Uzbekistan that served troops operating in Afghanistan. But Uzbek authorities closed it in 2005 after criticism from the US and EU over a crackdown on a mass protest in the town of Andijan.
Argos Media

G20: Gordon Brown brokers massive financial aid deal for global economy | World news | ... - 0 views

  • World leaders yesterday agreed on a $1.1 trillion injection of financial aid into the global economy,
  • The sprawling deal set out in a nine-page communique hammered out over two days of talks in London also contains tougher-than-expected measures to tighten financial regulation, including a clampdown on tax havens, the final part of the deal to be struck, after an impassioned call for compromise by Barack Obama.
  • British government officials lost their battle to include a commitment to spend a substantial share of the economic stimulus on low-carbon recovery projects.
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  • Vague low-carbon language and climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December were relegated to two paragraphs at the communique's end.
  • Some critics also pointed out that the summit failed to produce a co-ordinated plan to purge the global banking system of billions of dollars of toxic assets, and suggested that regulation of the financial industry should have gone further.
  • Brown said that the existing agreed fiscal stimulus will amount to $5tn by 2010, and the measures will raise world output by 4% by the end of next year.
  • The prime minister also won agreement from other G20 world leaders that the International Monetary Fund will monitor the existing stimulus,
  • Overall, the resources of the IMF will be trebled from $250bn to $700bn, following the lifting by the US of years of opposition. In a sign of the shift in world power, China agreed to provide $40bn of the new loans given to the IMF, with more to come from Saudi Arabia.
  • At the centre of the deal was a six-point plan:• Reform of the global banking system, with controls on hedge funds, better accounting standards, tighter rules for credit rating agencies, and immediate naming-and-shaming of tax havens that fail to share information.• A global common approach to dealing with toxic assets that impair the ability of banks to lend.• A $1.1tn package to supplement the $5tn stimulus to the global economy by individual countries. The $1.1tn will allow the IMF, the World Bank and others to increase lending to vulnerable countries. There will be a tenfold increase to $250bn in the IMF's facility allowing members to borrow from other countries' foreign currency reserves.• More power for leading developing countries within the IMF and World Bank, to end the stranglehold of the US and Europe on their top jobs.• $200bn of trade finance over two years to help reverse the steepest decline in world trade since 1945, with cash from a range of public and private sources.• A pledge that the fiscal stimulus, including the sale of gold by the IMF due to raise $6bn, will give help to the poorest nations and create green jobs.
  • Nicolas Sarkozy said the summit meant that the era of secrecy by banks was over; "great progress" had been made, he said, and the page had been turned on the economic model which had dominated since Bretton Woods in 1944 created the world's institutional framework."Since Bretton Woods, the world has been living on a financial model, the Anglo-Saxon model. It's not my place to criticise it, it has its advantages [but] clearly today a page has been turned," he said.
  • The summit's biggest loser may have been the fight against climate change. Diplomatic sources said China led the opposition to green language in the final communique. David Norman, the WWF campaigns director, claimed that the summit had been "a huge missed opportunity".
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