Georgia's policemen disperse opposition protesters in front of the parliament in Tbilisi, Nov. 7.

TBILISI, Georgia, Nov.10--Georgia’s parliament approved President Mikheil Saakashvili’s 15-day state of emergency, banning rallies and independent newscasts following violent clashes in Tbilisi.
But a senior official in the presidential office said emergency rule would be lifted much sooner, AFP reported.
Parliament’s endorsement, which defied international calls for emergency rule to be lifted, allows the restrictions on civil and press freedoms to remain in place until November 22.
But Yekaterina Sharashidze, the head of the presidential administration, told reporters: “The state of emergency is expected to be lifted much sooner than the parliament’s approved 15 days.
“The president has the right to lift it as soon as he deems it necessary,“ she added.
A US State Department spokesman said Friday it was sending Matthew Bryza, deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs, to Georgia this weekend to provide US “views and counsel“.
Saakashvili prompted international condemnation when he ordered the state of emergency on Wednesday after police fought running battles with anti-government protesters in the streets of Tbilisi.
Riot police used rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons to disperse thousands of people who had gathered for a sixth day of protests calling for Saakashvili to resign and for early parliamentary elections.
Then on Thursday Saakashvili called a snap presidential poll for January 5 and promised the state of emergency would be lifted within days. He also said a referendum would be held to set a date for parliamentary elections.
Saakashvili said Wednesday’s events were part of a coup attempt masterminded by Russia to overthrow his pro-Western government.
In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed the allegations.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 10--Pakistan announced plans to lift its state of emergency within one month and allowed opposition leader Benazir Bhutto to leave her villa following a day under house arrest, as the country sought Saturday to restore its battered image at home and abroad.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf insists he called the week-old emergency to help fight extremists who control swathes of territory near the Afghan border, but the main targets of his subsequent crackdown have been his most outspoken critics, including the increasingly independent courts and media.
Thousands of people have been arrested, TV news stations taken off air, and judges removed.
The government--under mounting pressure from the United States and other Western allies to follow through with promises to restore democracy--has announced that parliamentary elections initially slated for January would be held no more than a month later.
And Attorney General Malik Mohammed Qayyum told The Associated Press on Saturday that the state of emergency would “end within one month.“ He provided no further details and would not say when a formal announcement might come.
Security forces threw a cordon around Bhutto’s villa in an upscale neighborhood of the capital Friday, and rounded up thousands of her supporters to prevent a planned demonstration against the crackdown. But she was allowed to leave her home 24 hours later, traveling to a meeting with party colleagues.
Aides said she would meet later with foreign diplomats to discuss the political crisis.
The restrictions on Bhutto dimmed the prospect of her forming a US-friendly alliance with Musharraf against militants who have seized control of an ever-greater area of northwestern Pakistan.
US officials have expressed concern that the political crisis will actually distract Pakistan from that task, and NATO said Saturday that insurgents had killed six American troops in eastern Afghanistan.

BAGHDAD, Iraq,
Nov. 10--At least 18 people were killed in clashes between Al-Qaeda fighters and former insurgents who turned against the terror network, Iraqi police and a former insurgent leader said Saturday.
Most members of the Islamic Army, a major Sunni Arab insurgent group that includes former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, joined US forces battling Al-Qaeda in Iraq earlier this year, though some of the group’s leaders deny any contact with American troops. A top Islamic Army leader, known as Abu Ibrahim, told The Associated Press that his fighters ambushed Al-Qaeda members near Samarra on Friday, killing 18 people and seizing 16 prisoners.
An Iraqi police officer in the area corroborated Abu Ibrahim’s account, and said the hostages would not be transferred to Iraqi police.
Instead, he said he believed the Islamic Army would offer a prisoner swap for some of its members held by Al-Qaeda. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because of the situation’s sensitivity.
“We found out that Al-Qaeda intended to attack us, so we ambushed them at 3 p.m. on Friday,“ Abu Ibrahim said. “We have killed 18 people, including some Arab foreigners, and we have detained 16 others. We also seized weapons and eight vehicles,“ he said.
The clashes raged for nearly four hours Friday about 15 kilometers (9 miles) southeast of Samarra, the insurgent commander said. Police said they knew about the battle, but were unable to reach the site because it was too violent.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Nov. 10--Saudi Arabian authorities received a group of 15 Saudis on Saturday from the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the state-run news agency reported.
This latest transfer of detainees brings the number of Saudi nationals remaining in Guantanamo to 22, the Saudi Press Agency said.
It quoted Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz as saying that those returned will be referred to Saudi courts, AP said.
There were no details given about what charges the 15 may face in Saudi courts.
US authorities’ last transfer of Saudis from Guantanamo was in September when 16 were returned.
The detention of Saudis at the US naval base in Cuba has been a source of tension with Riyadh, a close US ally. Three Saudis have committed suicide inside the detention camp since it opened in 2002, according to the US military.
Of the 759 people who have been held at Guantanamo, 136 have been Saudis, the second-largest group after Afghan nationals, according to US Defense Department documents released to The Associated Press.
About 340 detainees remain in Guantanamo on suspicion of links to terrorism, Al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Most have been held for years without being charged.

NDJAMENA, Chad, Nov. 10--A senior Chadian judge has slammed foreign pressure that he claimed led to the freeing of 11 Europeans held in the central African nation over a bid to illegally fly out 103 children presented as war orphans.
“Our judicial system has been trampled upon,“ said Abdoulaye Cheikh, head of the Union of Judges of Chad, denouncing former colonial master France for arm-twisting Chad into submission, reported AFP.
“They should have been judged here. These decisions were taken elsewhere,“ he said in an interview, accusing French President Nicolas Sarkozy of treating “Chad like a nation without any institutions, without any judiciary.“
Three Spanish air crew and a Belgian pilot were freed on Friday on the orders of Chadian prosecutors probing a failed bid by French charity Zoe’s Ark to fly back children it said were orphans from Sudan’s war-wracked Darfur region.
The Spaniards, pilot Augustin Rey, co-pilot Sergio Munoz and cabin steward Daniel Gonzalez, took off for home with Spanish junior foreign affairs minister Bernadino Leon, who arrived on an airforce jet to collect them and meet Chad’s Prime Minister Nourradine Delwa Kassire Coumakoye.
This came after France’s Sarkozy made a lightning trip to Chad on November 4 to collect three French journalists and four Spanish air hostesses.
Although it was a Sunday, when courts are normally closed, a court was hastily opened to facilitate their lightning release and allow Sarkozy to return home in triumph.
There are only six Europeans now in jail cells and they are all members of the charity L’Arche de Zoe (Zoe’s Ark), which caused an international outcry and upset relations between Chad and France when it tried to fly the children aged between about one and 10 to foster homes in France.
Their flight was stopped and the first arrests made on October 25.

KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 10--Six US troops were killed when insurgents ambushed their foot patrol in the high mountains of eastern Afghanistan, officials said Saturday.
The attack, the most lethal against American forces this year, made 2007 the deadliest for US troops in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion.
The troops were returning from a meeting with village elders late Friday afternoon in Nuristan province when militants attacked them with rocket propelled grenades and gunfire, Lt. Col. David Accetta told The Associated Press.
“They were attacked from several enemy positions at the same time,“ said Accetta, a spokesman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force and the US military. “It was a complex ambush.“
The six deaths brings the total number of US troops killed in Afghanistan this year to at least 101, according to a count by the AP.
That makes this year the deadliest for Americans here since the 2001 invasion, a war initially launched to oust Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, but one that has evolved into an increasingly bloody counterinsurgency campaign.
The death toll mirrors the situation in Iraq, where US military deaths this month surpassed 850, a record high since the 2003 invasion there.
Three Afghan soldiers were also killed in Friday’s ambush, while eight Americans and 11 Afghans were wounded. The 14 total US casualties was the highest number of wounded and killed from a battle in Afghanistan this year, Accetta said.
“With Sunday being Veterans Day, this is a reminder of the sacrifices that our troops and our Afghan partners make for the peace and stability of the Afghan people,“ Accetta said.
Overall violence in Afghanistan this year has been the deadliest since the Taliban’s ouster. More than 5,800 people, mostly militants, have died in insurgency-related violence, according to an AP count based on figures from Afghan and Western officials.

An arrested demonstrator is led away by police officers in the Masjid Jamek area of downtown Kuala Lumpur, Nov. 10.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia,
Nov. 10--Police in the Malaysian capital used water cannon and fired tear gas shells on Saturday to scatter crowds gathering for a banned opposition rally to demand changes to the country’s electoral system.
Although hundreds of policemen, including riot police with shields and batons, guarded Kuala Lumpur’s landmark Merdeka (Freedom) Square, tens of thousands of people turned out for one of Malaysia’s biggest anti-government rallies since 1998, Reuters reported.
“Police sprayed water cannons twice to disperse a crowd of about 500 protesters chanting slogans,“ said a Reuters witness who watched the incident outside a historic domed mosque guarded by about 50 riot police, as helicopters hovered overhead.
Nearby, another group of 2,000 protesters, chiefly teenagers wearing yellow T-shirts, marched in heavy rain towards the city’s colonial-era railway station.
Groups of demonstrators later converged on the palace of Malaysia’s king, where opposition leaders handed over a list of election reform demands. Policemen in the crowd said it numbered less than 10,000, but organizers put the figure at 30,000.
Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim said he was happy with the turnout despite the government’s condemnation of the protest.
“I think this is a major success in the expression of public sentiment against fraudulent practices in the elections,“ Anwar told Reuters in a telephone interview.