An Iraqi soldier installs a national flag in the ground in the southern city of Basra in preparation for a formal handover ceremony transferring security responsibilities for the Basra province from British forces to the central Iraqi government, Dec. 15.

BASRA, Iraq, Dec. 16--Britain handed responsibility for security in Basra province to Iraqi forces on Sunday, effectively marking the end of nearly five years of British control of the southern part of Iraq.
“Today we stand before a historic juncture and a special day, one of the greatest days in the modern history of Basra,“ provincial governor Mohammed Mosbah Al-Waeli said at a ceremony at the last British base at an airport outside the city.
The British commander, Major-General Graham Binns, praised the Iraqi security forces and said they were up to the task, Reuters reported.
Responsibility for Iraq’s main oil export hub--the last of four provinces controlled by Britain since 2003--will be the biggest test yet of the Baghdad government’s ability to maintain security without troops from the United States or its main ally.
With Iraq’s second-largest city, only major port and nearly all its oil exports, Basra is far more populous, wealthier and more strategically located than any of the other eight of Iraq’s 18 provinces previously placed under formal Iraqi control.
It has also often been more violent, although Iraqi forces say their 30,000 troops and police in the area can keep peace.
“Today we are happy security will be handed over from the occupying British forces to Iraqi forces. You can see this happiness on the faces of everyone. It feels like a heavy burden has been lifted off our chests,“ said teacher Adel Jassem.
“The handover is a good step, but we hope that Iraqi forces are ready. I don’t think they are fully ready and the handover should have been delayed,“ said merchant Faisal Sharhan, 28.
Iraq’s second-largest city is a lively place, with restaurants open late and little of the barricaded neighborhood siege mentality that permeates the capital Baghdad. The mainly Shi’ite southern province has escaped the sectarian warfare that killed tens of thousands of people in central and northern Iraq.

ROME, Dec. 16--Thousands of demonstrators marched peacefully in the northern Italian city of Vicenza in the latest protest against a planned expansion of a US military base there.
A protest in February drew tens of thousands of marchers but Saturday’s march drew far fewer participants. Many of the marchers came from other Italian cities, reported AP.
Premier Romano Prodi’s center-left government has approved the expansion, going ahead with the project despite angry objections from far-left coalition allies, Greens and Communists.
The Ederle base has about 2,900 active duty military personnel. The expansion at the Dal Molin airport, on the other side of town, would allow the US military to move four battalions now based in Germany, raising the number to 5,000.
The move is part of the US Army’s plans to transform itself into a lighter, more mobile force.
Under the plans, elements of the US 173rd Airborne Brigade, a rapid reaction unit now spread between Italy and Germany, would be united.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf eventually lifted a six-week state of emergency in that country on Saturday. General Musharraf had declared state of emergency on November 3 on the pretext of what he termed internal and external conspiracies.
However, the insecurities in Pakistan’s tribal regions are still prevailing. This is while the main reason for imposing state of emergency was attributed to chaotic conditions of tribal areas.
In the early stages, Musharraf’s opponents deemed the state of emergency in Pakistan as a means to strictly curb the press freedom, helping Musharraf to remain in power and replacing the independent-minded jurists with jurists friendlier to the president.
The dismissed jurists had challenged holding Pakistan’s presidential elections. At the onset of recent political tensions in Pakistan, it was predicted that Musharraf’s presidency would be announced as illegal because of Musharraf simultaneously retaining the post of head of Army’s joint chief of staff.
However, the next political developments resulted in fixture of Musharraf’s power and endorsement his presidency by the pro-government jurists.
It seems that continuing the state of emergency is unnecessary under the present circumstances due to the fact that Musharraf has achieved his objectives. Hence, there is no need to make political parties and religious forces to lose confidence in the government by continuing the state of emergency.
Furthermore, one of the main demands of the US from Musharraf has been lifting the state of emergency, Therefore, it seems that by lifting the state of emergency, Musharraf both appeased the US and Britain, as well as giving positive response to some demands of Pakistan’s opposition parties.
Of course, no one can be optimistic that curbs on Pakistan’s mass media, including several private television channels will be reduced. Pakistani opposition parties are of the opinion that despite lifting the state of emergency, Musharraf is still having access to certain leverages that can make the political parties supporting him to be the winner of the next presidential elections. Controlling the media and judiciary are the most important political instruments that Musharraf is currently having access to.

A Turkish helicopter attacking an outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party camp in the Cudi mountains, Sirnak province, Dec. 16.

ANKARA, Turkey,
Dec. 16--Turkish warplan
es hit separatist Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq early Sunday, Turkey’s military said. One woman was killed, a local official in Iraq said.
The warplanes hit targets of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, in regions close to the border with Turkey and in Qandil mountain, which is further way from the frontier, the military said in a statement on its Web site, AP reported.
All planes returned to their bases, it said.
After the planes left the operation zone, the army continued firing on the targets in the north of Iraq with long-range weapons, the military said.
Artillery units could be seen firing shells toward Iraq in the early hours of Sunday from the town of Cukurca private Dogan news agency footage showed.
In Iraq, a top official said Turkish warplanes bombarded 10 Kurdish villages, killing one woman and injuring two others.
Abdullah Ibrahim, a top local official in the administrative center of Sangasar, acknowledged that there were Kurdish rebel bases in the area, about 105 miles from the Turkish border, but said they were far from the villages that were hit.
An Iraqi army officer with the border guard said the attack began about 2:30 a.m. on three villages in Iraq’s Qandil mountain chain, where Turkish and Iranian Kurdish rebels are based. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
PKK “targets in the regions of Zap, Avasin and Hakourk located in Iraq’s north, and deep in the Qandil mountain ... were hit through a large-scope aerial operation of the Turkish Air Force,“ the military said.

MOSCOW, Dec. 16--The Russian army’s chief of staff accused the West of playing politics with European arms control and warned that the launch of US interceptor missiles could trigger a Russian missile strike.
“Western states have deliberately turned an agreement on European arms control into an instrument to achieve political aims“ against Russia, Yury Baluyevksy said at a press conference broadcast on state television, reported AFP.
Russia on December 12 walked away from the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, a key Cold War agreement that limits the stationing of troops and heavy weapons from the Atlantic coast to Russia’s Ural mountains.
Baluyevsky criticized the NATO alliance’s eastward expansion to the Russian border but said Russia had “no plans for massing troops“ despite now having the freedom to do so after suspending its adherence to the treaty.
Russia said it pulled out of the CFE because of the failure of 26 NATO members to ratify the revised 1999 version of the treaty.
NATO countries have said they will only ratify if Moscow lives up to a pledge to pull its troops out of former Soviet republics Georgia and Moldova.
Russia’s decision on the CFE treaty has raised a storm of protest from Western governments, with NATO calling the move “deplorable“ and the US State Department saying Russia was “wrong.“
Baluyevsky also criticized US plans to deploy interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic as part of a missile defence shield aimed, Washington says, at guarding against a potential missile threat from Iran.
US offers made to Russia in negotiations over the missile defense shield were “unacceptable“ and the US plans could not be interpreted in any other way than as being aimed against Russia, Baluyevsky said.

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia,
Dec. 16--Huge crowds seeking autonomy for eastern Bolivia rallied against leftist President Evo Morales, as tens of thousands marched to support him in the capital, La Paz.
The governors in the eastern lowland and energy-rich states of Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni and Pando all declared greater self-rule at celebratory rallies Saturday, a move strongly opposed by Morales, who ordered extra police deployed to the region, AFP said.
The four rebel provinces--out of the nine that make up Bolivia--account for around two-thirds of the total gross domestic product and are home to a more than a third of the country’s population.
Morales warned that the moves towards autonomy were illegal, and that the army would guarantee Bolivia’s territorial integrity.
In Santa Cruz, a bastion of anti-Morales opposition, the streets of the provincial capital were flooded with marchers waving green and white flags, the regional colors.
Meanwhile in La Paz, in the president’s Andean stronghold, members of the Constituent Assembly delivered a draft of the new constitution to Morales at a public ceremony.
Morales also blasted the actions of the eastern regional leaders.
“With the pretext of autonomy they want to split the country, but we are not going to permit any division of Bolivia,“ he told the cheering crowd.
Morales earlier said that “the armed forces, and the Bolivian people, are here to make sure that the country never disintegrates.“
The pro-Morales majority in the assembly approved the new constitution last weekend over a boycott of opposition legislators, and after moving the meeting to the Andean city of Oruro, another Morales stronghold, to avoid street protests.
The dueling celebratory rallies highlight the divide between supporters and opponents of Morales who promised to better distribute the country’s wealth to benefit the people of the highlands, where most of Bolivia’s 8.5 million residents live.