US Army soldiers prepare to raid a house in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, December 2. (Reuters Photo)

BAGHDAD, Iraq,
Dec. 3--The United States will add thousands of troops to boost its forces back to the highest levels of Iraq invasion before crucial January elections, which US President George W. Bush insisted would be held on time, AFP reported.
"The elections should not be postponed. It's time for the Iraqi citizens to go to the polls, and that's why we are very firm on the January 30 date," he told reporters at the White House on Thursday.
The number of US forces in Iraq is to climb from 138,000 to about 150,000 by early January through extended tours and fresh deployments, raising the force to the same level as in April 30, 2003, just before Bush declared the end of major combat.
"Our commanders requested some troops delay their departure home and the expedition of the other troops to help these elections go forward. And I honored their request," Bush said.
Nevertheless, powerful Sunni Muslims lodged a fresh call for the polls to be delayed amid persistent violence, while the electoral commission again extended the deadline for Sunni parties to announce their candidacy.
Commission spokesman Farid Ayar said the final date for candidate registrations would be December 15 following "requests from individuals and political parties from the provinces of Salaheddin, Al-Anbar and Mosul".
Nearly 70 groups from the once powerful Sunni minority have threatened to boycott the vote, arguing that any election should be held only after foreign troops leave Iraq.
With the Shiite Muslim south and Kurdish north relatively violence free, US forces must ensure that Sunni hotspots are under control by January 30.
Ploughing ahead with offensives in the "triangle of death" south of Baghdad, US-led forces continue to come under daily attack in Ramadi, the capital of volatile Al-Anbar province, while rebels still control districts in Mosul.

Indian PM Manmohan Singh (r) and Russian President Vladimir Putin wave to photographers before their meeting in New Delhi, December 3. (Reuters Photo)

NEW DELHI, India, Dec. 3--Russian President Vladimir Putin began a three-day visit to India on Friday, his first in two years, seeking to provide new momentum to an old friendship by expanding business, energy and traditional military ties, Reuters reported.
Although the visit is part of an annual summit between the two countries, hosted by the two capitals alternately, Putin's talks will be the first with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's communist-backed coalition, which took power in May.
The Russian leader arrived in New Delhi in the early hours of Friday but did not speak to reporters.
However, in an interview to an Indian newspaper published on Friday, he said the change of government in New Delhi would have no bearing on the links between the two sides--which go back to India's strong support of the former Soviet Union during the Cold War.
"The current level of Russian-Indian partnership cannot and should not depend on internal transformations, which are quite natural in democratic societies," Putin told The Hindu daily.
"Our countries are already interacting on a clearcut line ... we have no doubt that the new Indian leadership will continue to pursue that course," he said.
Analysts say the interaction has, however, changed since the end of the Cold War and India's economic reform program, launched in the early 1990s, which gave New Delhi access to opportunities in the West, particularly the United States.
Singh's Hindu nationalist predecessors increasingly cosied up to Washington and built strong defense ties with Israel, slowly moving away from New Delhi's near complete dependence on Moscow for its arms supplies.
Putin, whose trip is overshadowed by a political crisis in Ukraine, hopes to halt this slide during talks with Indian leaders though no new deals are expected to be announced.

NICOSIA, Cyprus, Dec. 3--EU member Cyprus is playing a dangerous game of brinkmanship over whether it will veto the start of EU entry talks for Turkey. The stakes are high, Reuters said.
By dangling the veto threat, the Greek Cypriot government is hoping to push Ankara into formal recognition as well as winning further concessions in any future bids to reunite the island.
But a veto at a December 17 Brussels summit to consider if the EU should start accession talks with Ankara next year would spell the end of early hopes to reunite the Greek and Turkish communities and ensure the continued presence of Turkish troops on the Mediterranean island.
Few believe Nicosia wants to single-handedly ruin Turkey's hopes.
"I don't think they can afford to. It's a useful threat to discipline proceedings and advances their cause as long as they evoke a veto and not invoke it," said one diplomat.
Cyprus, now represented by Greek Cypriots, is the only EU member which does not have diplomatic relations with Turkey.
Turkey refuses while the island remains partitioned and the jury is out on which side will blink first.
Diplomats and analysts worry a veto would be a death knell to Turkey's groundbreaking EU-guided reforms and undermine Premier Tayyip Erdogan's government.
In the Cyprus corner, the risk is it would be the nail in the coffin of a stagnant peace process between Greek and Turkish Cypriots.
"The general thinking on this is that we would be moving into a long term scenario (for a resolution on Cyprus)," said James Ker-Lindsay of Civiltas think tank in Nicosia. "If Turkey feels humiliated it could dig its heels in," he said.

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 3--Secretary General Kofi Annan was facing new questions on Friday about support from his own employees after UN staff cast doubt on a show of confidence in his leadership, AFP reported.
In a vote late Thursday, the UN staff union adopted a resolution critical of an email letter signed by thousands of United Nations workers backing Annan in the face of what UN officials say is a media-driven campaign against him.
The issue began on Wednesday when UN staff worldwide received an email urging them to add their names to the letter, which denounces the "poisoned atmosphere" created by allegations of UN corruption and wrongdoing.
"It is imperative that UN staff members stand together and not play into the hands of critics who would like to destabilize the organization from within," the letter said--and more than 3,000 staff reportedly signed up.
But the union, in the resolution obtained by AFP, rebelled against the "vagueness" of the letter, which it said could be used to "publicly admonish" employees who did not sign on for the public show of support in Annan.
It asked UN management to give a full accounting of who was behind the letter and how they had been permitted to use the UN's internal communications system to send a note across the globe asking to support the UN chief.
Union members indicated concern that the phrase mentioning the destabilization of the United Nations "from within" was a way of quashing internal dissent.
They said the email had been manufactured by high-level UN officials trying to force a demonstration of solidarity from lower-level staff.
An official from the office of Annan's spokesman told AFP that a "critical mass" of 70 people was all that was needed to circulate an internal petition on the UN Internet system.

Armando Guebuza waves to supporters upon his arrival at Machava stadium in Maputo, November 28. (AFP Photo)

MAPUTO, Mozambique, Dec. 3--Businessman Armando Guebuza is leading in Mozambican elections to succeed President Joaquim Chissano, who is retiring after 18 years in office, state-run Radio Mozambique reported on Friday.
Guebuza, a member of Chissano's ruling Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo), had about 60 percent of the votes counted so far, while main challenger Afonso Dhlakama of the former rebel Mozambique National Resistance (Renamo) had 40 percent or less, Reuters quoted the radio as saying.
It did not say what percentage of the vote had been counted from the Dec. 1-2 ballot in the former Portuguese colony, laid to waste by a civil war that ended in 1992, and there was no independent verification of its figures.
"From a compilation of data from our reporters in the provinces, Guebuza is leading broadly," the radio said.
The Electoral Commission says it will take at least seven days to get all the results and that the final outcome will be announced on Dec. 17.
The radio's data showed Guebuza led in 10 of Mozambique's 11 provinces while Dhlakama was ahead in the remaining one.
Guebuza and Dhlakama said on Thursday they were pleased with the conduct of the election, in which Mozambicans also voted for a new parliament.
But former US President Jimmy Carter, the leading figure among several hundred international observers, said his team was not allowed access to voter tabulation centers, raising questions about independent verification.
Carter is heading a team of 60 observers from his Atlanta-based Carter Center. Observers from the European Union and African groups were denied access to a center where polling data is fed into computers.
The election is not expected to affect key policies in impoverished Mozambique, where the World Bank has launched one of its biggest programs in Africa to rebuild the country.

Bangladeshi Muslims offer their last Friday noon prayers of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan in a street next to the Baitul Mukarram National Mosque in Dhaka, November 12. (AFP File Photo)

DHAKA, Bangladesh, Dec. 3--Hundreds of thousands of Muslims from around the world on Friday began a three-day annual Islamic prayer meeting outside the Bangladesh capital, Dhaka, with politics banned and sermons set to call for world peace, Reuters reported.
Islamic scholars and theologians will make sermons and recite and explain excerpts of verses from the Koran to show the holy book of Islam shuns violence and promotes peace, organizers said.
Nearly two million Muslims, including religious leaders and devotees from 65 countries, are expected to gather at Tongi, 20 km north of Dhaka, by the final day on Sunday.
"Some 3,000 representatives from 40 countries have already joined the session that began from the Fazr (dawn) prayer today," said an official of Bangladesh Tablig Jamaat, the organizer of the 41st Biswa Ijtema, the biggest Muslim gathering in the world after the annual Haj pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
Over one and half million people have already gathered under makeshift tents constructed from jute sacks on an area covering 160 acres (64 hectares) on the banks of the river Turag.
The sermons will be delivered in Arabic, Bengali, English, Hindi, Urdu and other languages.
Organizers said no political statements would be included.
For two days, trucks and buses have been bringing faithful chanting Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest) to the venue.
"With unprecedented security measures, we have deployed some 6,000 uniformed and plain-clothed security as well as sniffer dogs," a senior police officer said. Air force helicopters will maintain surveillance flights, he said.
Security has been tightened since Bangladesh has been rocked by several mysterious bomb blasts in the last few years.

BEIJING, Dec. 3--China urged the European Union on Friday to lift a 15-year-old ban on arms sales, saying a prolonged embargo would affect bilateral relations and be tantamount to political discrimination, Reuters reported.
The ban, imposed after the Chinese army brutally crushed pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, will be on the agenda when German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder visits China from Monday and Premier Wen Jiabao heads to the Netherlands on Dec 7-9 for a China-EU summit.
"If the ban is maintained, bilateral relations will definitely be affected," Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui told reporters. "We think this is a kind of political discrimination." Zhang called the ban "outdated" and said lifting it should not be tied to China's human rights record or to Taiwan, over which Beijing claims sovereignty.
"Our biggest and most urgent desire now is to further develop the economy and further raise the standard of living of the Chinese people," he said.
"China has no intention of importing weapons from European countries," Zhang added, in an apparent gesture to allay fears China would go on an arms buying spree and menace Taiwan.
Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot said last month that the 25-nation EU was ready to give a positive signal during next Wednesday's EU-China summit in The Hague.
"We await this signal (and hope it) will be truly positive," Zhang said.