MUNICH, Germany, Feb. 11--NATO expects to have smashed most of the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan within the next two years but will need to keep troops there after 2009, the alliance’s chief said on Saturday.
“In 2009, we should see Afghanistan on the road to peace with the back of the resistance broken--but with undoubtedly a NATO military presence on the ground,“ Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told a security conference in Munich, reported Reuters.
“I hope in 2009 that we see an Afghanistan government that is better able to take the country into its own hands, which is what we hope for,“ he added.
However the scale of the challenge facing the alliance was underlined as Afghan national security adviser Zalmai Rassoul told the same meeting his country was facing a resurgent Taliban and an influx of foreign fighters.
“While we have come far, we are standing at a crossroads in 2007 between moving forward along a democratic path and letting it slip from our grasp,“ said Rassoul.
NATO commanders have in the past forecast the imminent end of the insurgency. But with more than 4,000 people killed in violence last year, 2005 was the bloodiest since US-led forces toppled the Taliban Islamist government in 2001.
The United States says the next year will be vital in ending the conflict, while other allies stress that NATO troops will need to be there for the long haul.
Concerns the alliance is getting bogged down came to the fore in Italy on Saturday after Defense Minister Arturo Parisi stunned pacifists in Romano Prodi’s coalition by saying the government may not cut its presence in Afghanistan until 2011.
Leftists in the government warned they could be provoked into leaving the coalition over the comments, but Prodi repeated his commitment to the mission where Italy has 1,900 troops.

Barack Obama

SPRINGFIELD, USA, Feb.11--Barack Obama announced his bid for president Saturday, a black man evoking Abraham Lincoln’s ability to unite a nation and a Democrat portraying himself as a fresh face capable of leading a new generation, AP said.
“Let us transform this nation,“ he told thousands shivering in the cold at the campaign’s kickoff.
Obama, 45, is the youngest candidate in the Democrats’ 2008 primary field dominated by front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and filled with more experienced lawmakers. In an address from the state capital where he began his elective career 10 years ago, the first-term US senator sought to distinguish himself as a staunch opponent of the Iraq war and a White House hopeful whose lack of political experience is an asset.
“I know I haven’t spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I’ve been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change,“ Obama said to some of the loudest applause of his 20-minute speech.
Obama is looking to cap his remarkable, rapid rise to prominence with the biggest political prize of all--the presidency. His elective career began just 10 years ago in the Illinois Legislature. He lost a bid for a US House seat, then won the Senate seat in 2004, a relatively smooth election made easier by GOP stumbles.
He tied his announcement to the legacy of Lincoln, announcing from the building where the future 16th president served in the state Legislature.
“We can build a more hopeful America. And that is why, in the shadow of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln once called on a house divided to stand together, where common hopes and common dreams still live, I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for President of the United States of America,“ Obama said. His voice rose to a shout as he spoke over the cheers from thousands who braved temperatures in the teens.

BEIT-UL-MOQADDAS, Feb. 11--More than 2,000 Israeli police were deployed in Beit-ul-Moqaddas on Sunday, bracing for protests over Israeli building work near the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, the most contentious site in the Holy Land.
“We deployed 2,000 men in and around the Old City of Beit-ul-Moqaddas to prevent disturbances such as those that occurred Friday,“ police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld told AFP.
Rioting on Friday left 15 Israeli policemen and at least 20 Palestinians wounded and further sporadic clashes also erupted on Saturday in Beit-ul-Moqaddas and parts of the occupied West Bank.
Rosenfeld said access to the mosque compound, known to Muslims as Haram Al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary, would remain limited to Muslim women and males over the age of 45 who hold an Israeli identity card. Palestinians from the West Bank will continue to be banned.
Checkpoints around Beit-ul-Moqaddas remain in place to prevent Palestinians from the West Bank sneaking into the city to stage protests against the repair work to a stone ramp near the Old City’s Dung Gate, Rosenfeld said.
The renovations, which the Arab League on Saturday called a “criminal attack“ on Islam’s third holiest shrine, resumed at 8:30 am.
Beit-ul-Moqaddas’s Islamic leaders have vowed to continue protests over the work, which has also angered people across the Arab and Muslim world.
Israel insists the works, expected to take months, pose no risk to the holy sites and will strengthen an access ramp for the “benefit and safety of visitors“ after an earthquake and snowstorm damage in 2004.
The compound, whose fate is one of the most contentious issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is where the second Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000 after a visit by then Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon.