Pakistani riot policemen stand guard in Lahore, Pakistan, Dec. 10.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 15--President Pervez Musharraf lifted Pakistan’s 6-week-old state of emergency and restored the constitution Saturday, easing a crackdown that enraged opponents and worried Western supporters.
Information Minister Nisar Memon said Musharraf had signed the order lifting the emergency. He called it a “historic day“ and said next month’s parliamentary elections would cement the country’s return to democracy, AP reported.
“The caretaker government is under oath to hold free, fair, transparent and impartial elections to put the country back on track,“ Memon said.
Musharraf still faces criticism at home and abroad that the Jan. 8 ballot will be flawed. The US-backed leader cast Pakistan into turmoil and raised serious doubts over the credibility of the vote, which will determine who will form the country’s new government, by imposing emergency rule Nov. 3.
Musharraf has said he imposed the state of emergency to halt a “conspiracy“ by top judges to end his eight-year rule and ward off political chaos that would hobble Pakistan’s efforts against extremism.
He has also insisted that the Supreme Court, which had been poised to rule on the legality of his October reelection, was acting beyond the constitution.
But his moves Friday to tweak the constitution to shore up his legal defenses appeared to confirm the opinion of many legal experts that the president’s case had been weak.
The president removed a condition from the constitution stating that civil servants had to wait two years after their retirement before running for elected office, Attorney General Malik Mohammed Qayyum told The Associated Press.
Musharraf stepped down as army chief only last month.
Qayyum said other changes sealed the retirement of purged Supreme Court judges, including former Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, who either refused or were not invited to sign a fresh oath after the emergency.
Their replacements swiftly approved Musharraf’s reelection in October by a Parliament stacked with his supporters.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15--The US Senate approved a defense bill to authorize more budget for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan without requiring a timetable of troop withdrawal from Iraq.
The bill, voted by 90 to 3, covers the budget year 2008 ending on Sept. 30 and authorizes $696 billion in military spending, including $189 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, English.people.com wrote.
The bill offers more help to troops returning from combat zones, including 3.5 percent pay rise for servicemen and post-war mental health evaluations.
It increases oversight on contractors and establishes auditing system to monitor reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan.
It also sets conditions on pricey weapons programs, authorizing the White House to spend $10 billion for ballistic missile defense, about $331 million less than requested.
“Caring for our troops and their families must always be our top priority,“ said Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee.
The bill, passed in the House of Representatives this week, is expected to be signed by President George W. Bush into law.
Slightly outnumbering Republicans, Senate Democrats have failed several times since this year in pushing for defense bill requiring timetable of troop withdrawal from Iraq.
However, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said after the Friday vote “the effort (to change course in Iraq) is not over.“
The Senate is set to vote on a 70-billion-dollar war spending bill next week.
While Democrats want attach the money to troop withdrawals, Republicans struggle for a “clean“ bill without strings.

After months of negotiations, European Union members finally agreed on a historic document known as the Lisbon Treaty. Participants in the Lisbon meeting called the document “a treaty“ because they wanted to prevent the bitter experience of the EU Constitution draft from happening again.
The EU Constitution was dropped away after Europeans in France and the Netherlands voted against it. After this failure, the European Union concentrated its efforts on devising a new document for the 27-member bloc, i.e. the Lisbon Treaty.
As per the new document, the EU presidency which is currently on a rotary basis will change. Also the head of the Foreign Policy Commission will be given more functions and responsibilities in defining the bloc’s foreign policy.
The number of commissions of the EU will be also cut.
Most political observers, however, predict some problems as the ratification process for EU Constitution faced problems . EU states are expected to ratify the treaty in their respective parliaments. Ireland is the only country which will hold a referendum for the treaty.
Experience has it that ratification of such major treaties and documents in EU parliaments are simpler than holding referendums.
In some European countries, right wingers oppose to broader power of European entities and weakening of their national sovereignty. One such country is the United Kingdom which has been traditionally opposing the formation of a united Europe.
It is predicted that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will face difficulties for attracting the satisfaction of the Labor Party representatives in the parliament.
Contrary to Britain, some smaller nations and particularly new members of the European Union in the east of the bloc, have expressed support for the Lisbon Treaty.
It is in fact to their own advantage as the new document gives equal power to small and big European nations for decision making processes. This can prevent the deepening gap between older and bigger countries and newer and smaller nations.
This is a double-edged sword as western countries of the EU may express concern about decreasing social welfare if internal integration of the bloc is strengthened.

Jean-Marie Le Pen

PARIS, Dec. 15--French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen went on trial for condoning war crimes after he described the German occupation of France as “not especially inhumane“.
Le Pen, 79, was not in court for the hearing, which relates to remarks made in an interview with a far-right magazine in 2005.
The veteran National Front (FN) chief told Rivarol magazine that “in France at least the German occupation was not especially inhumane, even if there were a number of excesses--inevitable in a country of 550,000 square kilometers, AFP said.
“If the Germans had carried out mass executions across the country as the received wisdom would have it, then there wouldn’t have been any need for concentration camps for political deportees.“
He also partially exonerated the German army over a 1944 massacre in the town of Villeneve d’Ascq, saying it was the work of a lieutenant “mad with rage“ over the death of comrades in a resistance attack, and that it was the Gestapo who intervened to stop the killings.
This version was disputed in court by the mayor of Villeneuve d’Ascq and by prosecutor Anne de Fontette, who said it was like calling the Gestapo “the blue berets of the 1940s.“
She asked the court to give Le Pen a five month suspended prison term and a 10,000 euro ($14,500) fine.
Rivarol’s editor Marie-Luce Wacquez, who was also prosecuted, told the court that she had not been shocked by Le Pen’s comments over the occupation.
“If you exclude the deportations, the occupation was pretty moderate compared to what happened in the Netherlands and Belgium,“ she said.
However historical debate has raged over the degree of French acceptance of the 1940-1944 occupation, which for most of the time was relatively peaceful compared to the experiences of countries in eastern Europe.

Kosovo Albanian students wave an EU flag during a rally for an immediate declaration of independence in Pristina, Dec. 10.

BRUSSELS, Belgium, Dec. 15--European Union leaders agreed to send a police and civilian mission to Kosovo, the EU’s Portuguese presidency announced, with the Serbian province expected to move toward independence.
“We took a political decision to send an ESDP (European Security and Defense Policy) mission to Kosovo,“ Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates told reporters after an EU summit in Brussels, AFP said.
“This is the clearest signal that the European Union could possibly give that it intends to lead on the whole issue of Kosovo’s future, its status and its role in the region,“ he added.
The EU has been preparing a police and justice operation of around 1,800 personnel, as well as a civilian office, to deploy to Kosovo if requested by the United Nations.
The mission would help ease the southern province’s transition of power from the UN administration, which has been in place since 1999, to the local authorities.
It was meant to be part of a solution proposed by UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari, who recommended that the province be granted “independence supervised by the international community“, a proposal rejected by Serbia.
Kosovo has been administered by the UN since NATO bombed Belgrade in 1999 to end a crackdown on separatist ethnic Albanians, and the Albanian majority has been impatient for independence ever since.
EU officials and experts believe that Kosovo’s leaders will announce next month their intention to declare independence, and then break away by May in “coordination“ with its EU and US allies.

TOKYO, Dec. 15--The head of NATO said he has not given up on persuading Russia to reverse its decision to suspend a key Soviet-era arms pact, urging Moscow to be flexible.
“It’s deplorable. It’s regrettable,“ NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said of Russia’s recent announcement that it had frozen its participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, AP reported.
“Our allies have been very flexible and very forward-leaning over the past weeks and months,“ he told reporters during a trip to Japan. “We have unfortunately not seen this flexibility answered by our Russian friends.“
“It is up to them to move and you cannot expect only the allies to move. The moves and flexibility should come from both sides. I’ve not given up yet.“
Signed in 1990 and modified in 1999, the CFE places precise limits on the stationing of troops and heavy weapons from the Atlantic coast to Russia’s Ural mountains--a mammoth agreement that helped resolve the Cold War standoff.
Russia attributes its freeze to the failure of 26 NATO members to ratify a revised 1999 version of the treaty.
Moscow has also been riled by US plans to deploy an anti-missile shield in two former Soviet satellite states.
NATO countries have said they will only ratify the CFE treaty once Moscow lives up to a pledge made in 1999 to pull its troops out of former Soviet republics Georgia and Moldova.

BEIT-UL-MOQADDAS, Dec. 15--Israel is facing an army recruitment problem with fewer and fewer people signing up as career officers following the loss of prestige suffered in the Lebanon war, a newspaper reported.
Disaffection with careers in the military--less well paid than jobs in the private sector--are beginning to affect non-fighting units with interest still high in the top-end, elite commando units, the Maariv daily said.
The number of school leavers volunteering for a career in the army in such units has fallen by more than half in recent years, AFP said.
Army personnel managed to recruit only eight candidates for 10 posts in logistics and six candidates for 10 jobs in transmissions, said Maariv, citing military statistics.
Internal memos put the lack of interest down to the attraction of high salaries in the private sector and recent staff cutbacks in the army.
This year, more than a quarter of young Israelis dodged military service, which is compulsory for Jewish youth in Israel, according to army statistics.
Members of the ultra-Orthodox religious community, who can study religion rather than join the army, account for 11 percent of the “draft dodgers“.
Seven percent were blamed on health problems, five percent on those who have problems with the law and four percent living abroad. Published in November, the statistics said 35 percent of conscription-age women escape their two-year military service for religious reasons.