Australian soldiers search Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, January 19. (AFP Photo)

CANBERRA, Australia, Feb. 22--Australia announced a 50 percent increase in its troop strength in Iraq on Tuesday, saying the 450 new soldiers will guard Japanese engineers and train the Iraqi army after the withdrawal of Dutch soldiers from southern Iraq, Reuters reported.
Prime Minister John Howard said the decision to deploy extra troops, to be based in Iraq's Muthanna province, followed a request from Japan and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"The prime minister of Japan, Junichiro Koizumi, telephoned me last Friday night and, amongst other things, invited and requested this Australian contribution," Howard told a news conference.
The new troops will arrive in about 10 weeks and will stay for six months, followed by a second six month rotation.
Australia, a close ally of the United States, sent some 2,000 military personnel to Iraq and the Middle East at the start of the US-led war in Iraq.
It currently has about 880 personnel in and around Iraq helping to rebuild the country and protect diplomats.
"The government believes that Iraq is very much at a tilting point, and it's very important that the opportunity of democracy, not only in Iraq but in other parts of the Middle East, is seized and be consolidated," Howard said.

SEOUL, South Korea, Feb. 22--North Korean leader Kim Jong-il told a Chinese envoy his country would return to six-way nuclear disarmament talks if conditions were right and the United States showed sincerity, Reuters quoted Pyongyang's official news agency as saying on Tuesday.
It was the first statement by the reclusive Kim since North Korea explicitly declared on Feb. 10 that it had atomic weapons and was also pulling out of the talks with South Korea, China, Russia, the United States and Japan.
Analysts and officials said Kim's pledge may be a sign the North is backing down from its high-stakes brinkmanship in the face of unified international pressure, including a push by its main benefactor, China, to restart the stalled talks.
China sent Wang Jiarui, head of the Communist Party's liaison department, to Pyongyang on Saturday to try to revive the talks.
"We will go to the negotiating table anytime if there are mature conditions for the six-party talks thanks to the concerted efforts of the parties concerned in the future," KCNA quoted Kim as telling the Chinese envoy.
Kim said he hoped the United States would show "trustworthy sincerity and move," KCNA said. That remark was an apparent reference to North Korean demands that Washington drop what Pyongyang calls its hostile attitude and provide guarantees for North Korea's security.
China has played host to three rounds of the six-way talks aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear programs in return for aid and security guarantees.
North Korea had never opposed the six-party talks and was committed to de-nuclearization of the Korean peninsula, Kim said. His country has been branded by US President George W. Bush as part of an "axis of evil" along with Iran and pre-war Iraq.
The new US lead negotiator to the talks, Ambassador to South Korea Christopher Hill, said China would propose the next step in the process but declined to say whether Beijing would soon call a meeting of the six parties.

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Feb. 22--Lebanese opposition deputies, capitalizing on public anger over the killing of former Prime Minister Rafik Al-Hariri, said on Tuesday they would seek a no-confidence vote in the Syrian-backed government next week, Reuters reported.
The opposition has blamed Syria for Hariri's assassination, demanding that Damascus relinquish its military and political grip on Lebanon and that top pro-Syrian officials resign.
But the government has a solid majority in the 128-member parliament and is unlikely to lose a no-confidence vote despite unprecedented public protests since Hariri's death on Feb. 14.
Thousands of Lebanese demonstrated in Beirut on Monday, calling for the government to resign and Syria to pull out its 14,000 troops from Lebanon, while the United States and France piled up international pressure on Damascus.
US President George W. Bush, in a speech at the start of a trip to Europe, branded Syria an "oppressive neighbor" to Lebanon and insisted Damascus must "end its occupation".
Later, Bush and French President Jacques Chirac issued a joint call for a Lebanon "free from foreign domination".
Bush and Chirac, whose country formerly ruled both Lebanon and Syria, condemned Hariri's killing. Their joint statement did not blame Syria but backed a UN investigation into the attack.
The 25-nation European Union called for an international probe into Hariri's death and underlined its support for a United Nations resolution calling for Syria to withdraw.
But Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal said calls for an international probe were premature and Beirut should be allowed to hold its own investigation.
He said in remarks published on Tuesday that countries should not rush to accuse Syria of involvement in the killing.
"We cannot accuse one side before we know the facts," the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat daily quoted him as saying. "Those who accuse Syria without evidence will be open to criticism."
Hariri, who holds Saudi citizenship, had close business, political and personal ties to the Saudi royal family. He was also an ally of Syria for much of his dozen years in and out of power, finally quitting in October after Damascus insisted on extending the term of his rival President Emile Lahoud.

Mahmoud Abbas

RAMALLAH, Occupied Palestine, Feb. 22--Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was deep in political crisis on Tuesday over the inclusion of members of Yasser Arafat's corruption-tainted "old guard" in a new cabinet up for approval by a reform-minded legislature, Reuters reported.
Lawmakers from Abbas's Fatah faction threatened to vote no-confidence in the government, a move that would force Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie from office, unless changes were made in the cabinet line-up before parliament met later in the day.
Abbas and pro-reform legislators have been trying to persuade Qurie to drop some Arafat loyalists widely seen by Palestinians as corrupt and include more new faces in the government, especially technocrats who can help it run smoother.
"Fatah members of the legislature will meet before parliament convenes. If they don't receive (the changes), they will proceed with voting no-confidence in Abu Ala (Qurie)," a legislator from the faction told Reuters. Negotiations Affairs Minister Saeb Erekat described the situation as difficult but said: "That is what democracy is all about."
Abbas, who would be under no obligation to leave office if Qurie does, is under pressure from the United States and other international donors to revamp often competing security forces and fight corruption.
"I hope he will seize the moment," US President George W. Bush said in a speech in Brussels on Tuesday during a fence-mending visit to Europe.

LONDON, Feb. 22--Prime Minister Tony Blair is responsible for a "destructive" style of politics that has eroded British public confidence and will lead to election apathy, former prime minister John Major warned in a newspaper article, AFP reported.
Blair's New Labour camp and supporters, including Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, have "abused procedures wherever they can; politicized a once-neutral government information service; ignored conventions of straight and honest government; and deceived the public--even on issues of war and peace", Major said Tuesday.
In a comment entitled "Labour's half-truths and spin are a cancer in the body politic" for The Daily Telegraph, Major predicted poor turnout at an upcoming general election expected in May.
He said New Labour's media strategy was to deal in "half-truths and in the barefaced daily recitation of the unbelievable", leading to a loss of confidence.
As a result, millions of electors believe the government 'lies' as a matter of course," he argued.
The former Conservative leader, who was swept out of power by Labour's 1997 election victory, accused Blair and Brown of taking decisions without fully consulting the rest of the cabinet, using it just to "rubber-stamp" moves.
"When the prime minister has left the corridors of power far behind him, he will reflect and, unless he acts now, will regret--too late--the destructive manner of politics he permitted to take root," Major warned.

Thabo Mbeki

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Feb. 22--South African President Thabo Mbeki has criticized the United States for listing Zimbabwe as one of the world's "outposts of tyranny", saying his country could help its neighbor hold free elections next month, Reuters reported.
In an interview with London's Financial Times, Mbeki said placing Zimbabwe on Washington's list of six renegade nations last month had discredited its proclaimed policy of promoting world freedom.
New US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice named Zimbabwe alongside Cuba, Belarus, Myanmar, Iran and North Korea as "outposts of tyranny" in a recent speech, but Mbeki told the newspaper he did not view Zimbabwe in the same light.
"I think that it's an exaggeration and I think that whatever (the US government) wants to do with regard to that list of six countries, or however many, I think it's really somewhat discredited," Mbeki said.
"To put all these countries together and say Zimbabwe's one of these outposts of tyranny, how do you justify that? It doesn't mean that there's nothing that's gone wrong in Zimbabwe, but to describe it as an outpost of tyranny..."
Critics say Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has hobbled the opposition in a bid to hang onto power and plunged the country into political and economic turmoil through a policy of land redistribution using intimidation and violence.
Zimbabwe will hold parliamentary elections on March 31 amid fresh opposition accusations that the political playing field has already been tilted in Mugabe's favor.
Mbeki has remained steady in his quiet diplomacy approach to solving the crisis in Zimbabwe, despite criticism from the West. He defended his stance, saying he too had at certain times publicly criticized Harare over certain policies but that he respected Mugabe with whom he had "very good" relations.
Mbeki said he supported sending a team from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to monitor the Zimbabwean elections and to help create free and fair polls.
But he indicated that he saw little benefit in overt and public criticism of Mugabe's government.

DUBAI, UAE, Feb. 22--Tensions have emerged between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia over a border row dating back to the 1970s and fresh differences, chiefly over trade links with Washington, AFP quoted Persian Gulf officials as saying.
The strains between the oil-rich neighbors coincide with problems between Riyadh and both Bahrain and Qatar, which are grouped with Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the six-nation Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC).
"The Emiratis raised the (border dispute) with the Saudis shortly after a new leadership took over in Abu Dhabi" last November following the death of UAE founder and president Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan
Al-Nahayan, said a senior Persian Gulf official who requested anonymity.
"The Saudis replied that the issue had been settled under an agreement signed by the two countries in the 1970s," the official told AFP.
President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahayan, who succeeded his father as head of the seven-member federation, "raised the question when he visited Riyadh (in December) on his first trip abroad after his accession to power".
But the Saudis referred to the border accord, another Persian Gulf official confirmed.
Under the agreement signed on August 21, 1974 in the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia dropped its claim to the Buraimi oasis region, while Abu Dhabi relinquished a 25-kilometer-long strip of land linking it to Qatar, thus isolating Doha.
The UAE also gave up some 80 percent of the resources of the Shaybah oilfield in southeast Saudi Arabia.
Shaybah, located in Saudi Arabia's vast Rub Al-Khali, or Empty Quarter, desert, has some 15 billion barrels of proven oil reserves and untapped gas reserves of 25 trillion cubic feet. Abu Dhabi has always felt wronged by the accord, which it perceives as having been concluded under duress.

BRUSSELS, Belgium, Feb. 22--Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko reiterated Tuesday his call for his country to join the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), AFP reported.
"We would like to see Ukraine being integrated into the European Union and into the north Atlantic alliance," he told reporters after a summit meeting with NATO leaders including US President George W. Bush.
Both the EU and NATO have pledged to boost ties with the new Ukrainian leadership, but have said it is too early to talk about membership.
Yushchenko added that Ukrainian voters who elected him in December "were motivated because they wanted to see Ukraine in Europe, not the neighbor of Europe" in an apparent reference to the EU's insistence on keeping its ties with Ukraine in the framework of its so-called neighborhood policy.
Speaking at a press conference alongside Yushchenko, NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer reiterated the alliance's commitment to boosting ties with Kiev, saying all wanted a "rich and progressively stronger partnership with Ukraine."
"We will sharpen and we will refocus our ongoing cooperation with Ukraine," he said.
And he added encouragement for Kiev's hopes. "Those aspirations for Euroatlantic integration we share and we support," he said.
"It is definitely no exaggeration to say that this summit marked the beginning of a new chapter in our relations."