US and Afghan soldiers walk at the site of a suicide attack in Kabul, Nov. 29.

KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 4--Afghanistan’s extremist Taliban movement controls no more than five out of 59 districts in the south of the country, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said here Tuesday.
According to AFP, the insurgents are also isolated in the south, ISAF spokesman Brigadier General Carlos Branco told reporters traveling with US Defense Secretary Robert Gates who arrived late Monday for a surprise visit.
The Taliban control “not more than five districts“ in the south, he said, adding there were 59 districts in the region.
“As an insurgent movement, the Taliban have failed. After six years they only control small pockets. They can’t confront the ISAF forces,“ the Portuguese general said.
Asked about claims that there has been a resurgence of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan as the network has suffered setbacks in Iraq, he said only: “We have increased reports of foreign fighters’ presence.“
A European think-tank, The Senlis Council, said in a report released last month that the Taliban had a permanent presence in more than half of Afghanistan.
The claim was dismissed by officials in Afghanistan, including Branco who said at the time the rebels were installed only in “very small pockets without territorial continuity.“
Gates visited the ISAF headquarters in Kabul Tuesday for talks with commanders of forces in the south, which sees the worst of the violence, ahead of a meeting with these countries in Scotland this month.

Yulia Tymoshenko

KIEV, Ukraine,
Dec. 4--A coalition of two parties linked to Ukraine’s pro-Western “Orange Revolution“ on Tuesday proposed Yulia Tymoshenko as their candidate to be restored in her old job as prime minister.
Members of parliament representing Our Ukraine, the party of President Viktor Yushchenko, and Tymoshenko’s bloc approved the proposal unanimously in a room inside the parliament building, Reuters reported.
The coalition is now to submit Tymoshenko’s nomination to the president, who then has 15 days to consider it and send it to the 450-seat parliament for approval.
The two “orange“ groups control 227 seats in parliament after a September election, one more than required to win most votes in the chamber.
Also approved unanimously by the coalition was a proposal to nominate Foreign Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk as speaker of parliament.

Members of a local voting commission dump ballots onto a table to begin their vote count in Russia's parliamentary elections at a polling station in Moscow, Dec. 2.

MOSCOW, Dec. 4--Russia’s largest independent vote monitoring body said Tuesday that parliamentary elections this weekend, in which President Vladimir Putin’s party won a landslide victory, were not free, AFP said.
“We consider these elections were not free, not competitive. These were elections that took place under pressure,“ the head of Golos, Lilia Shibanova, told journalists in Moscow.
“We have never had so much pressure,“ Shibanova said, adding that “we cannot have confidence in the results“.
Golos fielded 2,500 observers on election day Sunday, using journalists with access to polling stations, the organisation’s website said.
Domestic observers not affiliated to political parties are banned under Russian law.
Meanwhile, Russian opposition leader Garry Kasparov denounced the weekend parliamentary election as the “dirtiest“ in the nation’s history, AP said.
“There are no illusions that what is being called elections was the most unfair and dirtiest in the whole history of modern Russia,“ Kasparov said at a news conference.
Kasparov, who heads the Other Russia coalition of opposition groups, was arrested and jailed for five days for leading a protest rally in Moscow on Nov. 24. His group was not allowed to run for parliament.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 4--Pakistani opposition leaders Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto set their parties to work Tuesday on a list of demands they say the government must meet to stop them boycotting elections in January.
The former premiers agreed to join forces at a meeting late Monday, saying that they would consider boycotting next month’s crucial vote if President Pervez Musharraf does not agree to extra steps for free polls, AFP said.
Musharraf last week pledged to lift a month-old state of emergency by December 16, ahead of the key polls on January 8, but the opposition say the vote will still be unfair.
A committee set up by the parties of the two ex-premiers to draft the “charter of demands“ had its maiden session on Tuesday, Sharif’s spokesman Ahsan Iqbal told AFP.
“They have started work now,“ Iqbal said.
The chairman of Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party, Raja Zafarul Haq, said the committee’s demands would be based on the discussions between Sharif and Bhutto on Monday night but would focus on fair elections.
“The committee is expected to finalize its work soon, I think in two or three days,“ he said.
The meeting took place at the legal chambers of senator Raza Rabbani, a senior official from Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party.
Rabbani stressed the need for an independent election commission and said local authorities were giving “undue favor“ to pro-Musharraf candidates.
Any boycott could drastically damage the credibility of elections that are supposed to stabilize the nuclear-armed nation of 160 million people, seen as a bulwark against Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.
Sharif told a joint news conference with Bhutto late Monday following the talks at her Islamabad home that “in the present circumstances free, fair and transparent elections seem impossible.“
He added that he would not be discouraged by the fact that election authorities had rejected his nomination papers earlier on Monday.

Aung San Suu Kyi

YANGON, Myanmar, Dec. 4--The opposition party of detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi marked Myanmar’s National Day on Tuesday by criticizing the military government for lowering the nation’s prestige.
The statement by the National League for Democracy marking the 87th anniversary of a student strike against British colonialism also called for the release of Suu Kyi--who has been detained for 12 of the past 18 years --and other political prisoners, including those arrested during anti-government demonstrations in August and September,
AP reported.
The statement was released at a ceremony attended by 200 supporters at party headquarters in Yangon, the first such gathering since the military junta violently cracked down on the protests, killing at least 15 people and detaining thousands, including hundreds of NLD members.
In his official National Day message, junta chief Senior Gen. Than Shwe accused “neocolonialist countries“ and their puppets inside Myanmar of agitating people to create unrest and violence.
The term “neocolonialists“ is usually used for Western nations that criticize the military regime over its poor human rights record and refusal to hand over power to a democratically elected government.
Than Shwe also urged support for the junta’s seven-step “roadmap to democracy“ that is supposed to lead to free elections, although no timetable has been set.
The junta on Monday began implementing the third step of the roadmap, the drafting of a new constitution.
In its statement, the NLD said “national prestige has reached a very low level,“ and that to raise it, “it is now imperative that all the nationalities of the union should rebuild national reconciliation.“
Unity of the country’s fractious ethnic groups is a crucial issue for Myanmar. Some ethnic minorities along the eastern border with Thailand have been fighting for several decades for greater autonomy from the central government.

JAKARTA, Indonesia, Dec. 4--The youngest son of ex-dictator Suharto is attempting to recover more than $100 million
seized by an Indonesian bank, his lawyer said in a report Tuesday.
“We will file an appeal to the Supreme Court,“ O.C. Kaligis, a lawyer for Tommy Suharto, was quoted as saying by news website Detikcom.
According to AFP, the move follows a November ruling by Jakarta’s Appeal Court allowing state-owned Bank Mandiri to keep 1.3 trillion rupiah ($137 million) it seized from PT Timor, a car importing company owned by Tommy.
The money was first seized by Bank Mandiri in July 2001 after the company failed to pay customs duties it owed for the import of South Korean cars, but a district court ruling in June 2006 ordered Bank Mandiri to return it.
PT Timor was granted special permission to side-step a ban on the import of completed cars while Suharto was still in power in 1996.
The company imported the Korean cars, rebadged them with the “Timor“ brand, and then marketed them in Indonesia.
In a separate case, the Indonesian government is seeking millions of dollars from Tommy in allegedly stolen assets, as well as damages and interest, in a civil suit related to an alleged land scam.
Corruption cases against Suharto family members and cronies are seen as key to breaking a culture of graft and nepotism inherited from the dictator’s 32-year rule.