Kosovo Albanians rally for an immediate declaration of independence in Pristina, Dec. 10.

MOSCOW, Dec. 17--Russia’s top envoy on Kosovo said Monday that European Union plans to send a mission to the separatist Serbian region would be illegal without UN authorization, the Interfax news agency reported.
EU leaders last week agreed to send a policing and security mission to Kosovo to replace the current United Nations administrative mission that has been in place since the end of fighting in 1999.
The EU decision came amid growing expectations that Kosovo is on the verge of declaring independence despite strong objections from Serbia and Russia.
“The structure of the international presence in Kosovo is agreed in Security Council Resolution 1244 and it does not give the right to freely change the structure of the international presence,’’ the agency quoted Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko as saying.
Meanwhile, Russia successfully conducted a test launch on Monday of a new intercontinental ballistic missile, Reuters quoted the navy as saying.
A statement said the missile was launched from the Tula nuclear powered submarine in the Barents Sea in the Arctic and hit a designated area in the Kura testing ground on the Kamchatka Peninsula on Russia’s Pacific coast.
The launch was conducted from an underwater position as a part of training to test the readiness of the marine strategic nuclear forces, the statement said.
A navy spokesman would not say what type of missile was tested.
Itar-Tass news agency said the Tula submarine carried Sineva missiles commissioned by a decree from President Vladimir Putin in July.
Missile tests have become regular occurrences in the Russian armed forces in the past few years.
They are viewed by Russia’s political and military leadership as evidence that they are reviving the country’s military might.

QANDIL, Iraq, Dec. 17--Turkey’s bombardment of suspected PKK rebel rear-bases inside northern Iraq drew a furious response Monday from the Iraqi government and villagers hit by the air strikes.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said civilians had suffered in the bombings, despite Turkey’s insistence that only Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) bases had been targeted, AFP said.
“We understand Turkish concerns over the presence of PKK, but yesterday there was some collateral damages to civilians. ... such action must be coordinated with the Iraqi government,“ said Zebari, who did not give casualty figures.
Local officials said Sunday morning’s bombardment had killed a woman and seriously wounded five other civilians as well as destroying schools and bridges in the foothills of the Qandil mountains.
“We all were asleep when the warplanes struck our village,“ said Hassan Ibrahim, 75, a farmer from the village of Qalatuqa along the Iraq-Turkey border.
“When the attack came I got out of the house. We were all suffocating because of the dust.“
He said Turkish warplanes had been overflying the region for the past month.
“Earlier it was Saddam who destroyed our homes, now it is the Turks,“ an angry Ibrahim told AFP as he prepared to leave his home.
“We are going far away and we don’t even know why we are being blamed. The Turkish planes have left us with no choice but to flee.“
On Sunday, Turkish warplanes hit several villages along the border with Iraq as part of its military operation to target PKK rebel hideouts.
The PKK is fighting for self-rule in southeastern Turkey since 1984.
More than 37,000 people have died on both the sides since the conflict broke out.

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Dec. 17--Lebanon’s presidential election was postponed for a ninth time Monday, to December 22, despite intense international efforts to convince rival parties to strike a deal and end a dangerous political vacuum.
“The parliament session that was scheduled today has been postponed to Saturday December 22 at 12:30 p.m.,“ Mohamed Ballout, spokesman for parliament speaker Nabih Berri, told AFP reporters.
The delay, the ninth since September, comes amid intense efforts by the United States and other countries to convince Lebanon’s pro- and anti-Syrian factions to proceed to a vote and avoid plunging the country into further chaos.
Lebanon has been without a president since November 23, when Emile Lahoud stepped down at the end of his term with no elected successor.
Washington at the weekend dispatched one of its top envoys to the country to meet with the rival leaders and press them to end their standoff, which marks the country’s worst political crisis since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.
“The United States believes that it is time now to elect a new president,“ said David Welch, the US assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs.
“There is no reason for any further delay.“
France, Lebanon’s former colonial power which has been at the forefront of international efforts to mediate the crisis, also warned that time was running out for a solution and that Monday’s session was crucial.
“Monday is really the last chance, and France calls on all parties, inside and outside, to ensure that Lebanon can have a president,“ President Nicolas Sarkozy said.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 17--Pakistan’s election campaign began in earnest on Sunday, a day after President Pervez Musharraf lifted his unpopular emergency rule and restored the constitution.
The election commission was set to release the final list of candidates for the January 8 vote for parliament, which Musharraf’s critics say has been effectively rigged against them during the six weeks of the emergency, reported AFP.
“We are collecting the data from across the country and the final list of candidates would be compiled late Sunday,“ election commission official Mohammad Shahbaz said.
In a televised address late Saturday, the president insisted emergency rule had saved the nation, alleging there had been a conspiracy by unnamed people to undermine the country’s democracy.
“Against my will and as a last resort, I imposed emergency rule and saved Pakistan from destabilization,“ he said.
“I put my own reputation at risk, but I did it because I could not allow Pakistan to be in grave danger. It was painful and a most difficult decision.“
Former premiers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif were criss-crossing the country on Sunday, drumming up support for their parties.
They are taking part in the election after failing to agree on a joint boycott.

SYDNEY, Australia, Dec. 17--Australia’s new government has warned NATO and its allies they will lose the war against hardline Taliban forces in Afghanistan unless they urgently change tactics, a report said.
The country’s new Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon issued the stark warning at a meeting in Edinburgh last week of eight nations engaged in the conflict, including the United States, The Australian newspaper said.
The coalition of NATO and allied forces engaged in the conflict since 2001 must overhaul military and civil programmes aimed at fostering stability in the troubled country if they are to win the conflict, he cautioned.
The minister’s comments to the closed-door gathering were based on classified intelligence assessments prepared for the previous Australian government of John Howard which painted a bleak picture of the Afghan conflict, AFP said.
“The previous government would have us believe that good progress is being made in Afghanistan. The reality is quite a different one,“ Fitzgibbon told The Australian after returning from the meeting in Britain.
“We are winning the battles and not the war, in my view. We have been very successful in clearing areas of the Taliban but it’s having no real strategic effect,“ he said.
Fitzgibbon also told the meeting in Edinburgh, attended by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, that while NATO and its allies had been successfully “stomping on lots of ants, we have not been dealing with the ants’ nest“.
“We need much more than a military response. This is largely about winning the hearts and minds of the more moderate of the Taliban and other sections of the Afghan community,“ he said.

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan, Dec. 17--President Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s Ak-Zhol party was in the lead in elections in Kyrgyzstan with 46.65 percent of the vote after 70 percent of ballots were counted, the election commission said Monday.
The opposition Socialist party Ata-Meken was running a distant second with 9.7 percent of votes in Sunday’s election, followed by the moderate opposition Social-Democratic party (PSDK) with 4.7 percent, the commission said.
No other party appeared to have overcome a three percent threshold to enter parliament. But commission officials told AFP that it was still too early to tell how the 90 seats in the parliament would be distributed.
“It is too early to tell how many mandates the opposition will have, or even if they will have any at all,“ said Nina Musina, a commission official.

World leaders at the international donors conference in Paris, Dec. 17.

PARIS, Dec.17--Ninety international delegations began meeting Monday in Paris to agree on an aid package worth billions of dollars to stabilize the Palestinian economy and shore up the peace process with Israel.
Around 70 countries and the world’s major international organizations are attending the one-day Conference of Donors for a Palestinian State, which aims to raise $5.6 billion (3.85 billion euros) over the next three years, AFP said.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner opened the meeting by asking for a minute of silence in tribute to the victims of last week’s “barbaric“ bomb attacks in Algiers, who included 17 UN workers.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Israeli counterpart Tzipi Livni are taking part in the event, alongside Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.
According to Rice, the Palestinians are seeking “around 1.6 to 1.7 billion (dollars)“ for the coming year.
Sources in Rice’s delegation said the United States was prepared to provide $550 million in 2008.
The European Commission is due Monday to announce $650 million (450 million euros) in aid for 2008, EU’s external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner told AFP.
The German government, meanwhile, promised 200 million dollars by 2010.