French President Nicolas Sarkozy (l) shakes hands with Afghan President Hamid Karzai prior to their meeting at the Presidential Palace in Kabul, Dec. 22.

KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 22--French President Nicolas Sarkozy flew into Kabul on Saturday on a surprise visit to Afghanistan to meet President Hamid Karzai and some of the French troops based here.
Sarkozy was accompanied on the lightning visit by his Defense Minister Herve Morin and other officials. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who had flown in from India, met the president at the airport, AFP said.
It is Sarkozy’s first visit to Afghanistan since he became president in May.
He was to meet French soldiers as well as Karzai and the head of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), General Dan McNeill, a statement from the French government said.
France has around 1,300 soldiers with ISAF, a force of more than 40,000 soldiers from nearly 40 nations that is helping to tackle an insurgency led by the Taliban movement which was removed from government in late 2001.
Most of the French soldiers operate around Kabul while some are deployed at a base in the southern city of Kandahar, where France has six Mirage jets.
France is also due to send dozens of military trainers to the volatile southern province of Uruzgan to work with the growing Afghan army.
Sarkozy told the US Congress last month that French soldiers would stay in Afghanistan “as long as needed“. “For me, failure is not an option,“ he said.
Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi is also expected to visit his country’s troops in Afghanistan around Christmas, which falls on Tuesday, according to an Italian news report.

Robert Gates

WASHINGTON,
Dec. 22--US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has warned that the US military is in danger of running out of money for its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He said Congressional funding for the wars was inadequate and budget constraints were undermining planning, BBC wrote.
Congress this week approved $70 billion--just half the sum that US President George W Bush had sought.
But Gates also said many troops could be pulled out of Iraq as planned next year thanks to better security.
He raised the possibility of five combat brigades returning home by July next year, with the first unit due to leave this month.
However, he said during an end-of-year news conference: “Funding the war in fits and starts is requiring us to make short-term plans and short-term decisions.“
The defense secretary said in September he hoped US troop levels might be reduced to 100,000 by the end of 2008.
There are currently almost 160,000 US troops in Iraq.
Asked whether he was still aiming for such a reduction, Gates said he now regretted having used a specific number.
But he said he did expect to see a decrease in the number of brigade combat teams.
The current declared US plan is to cut these from 20 to 15 by the middle of next year, leaving troop levels in Iraq at approximately 130,000.
The deployment of 30,000 extra troops in the Baghdad area this year--the so-called surge strategy--has led to a lull in the violence.
Gates said the improvement meant that Gen David Petraeus, the senior US commander in Iraq, could “decide to bring out the first five teams by July“.
“The first of those is coming out this month. My hope has been that the circumstances on the ground will continue to improve,“ he added.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 22--US scientists found traces of enriched uranium on smelted aluminum tubing from North Korea, which appears to contradict its denials of a secret uranium-based nuclear program, the Washington Post reported.
US officials were concerned that disclosing the finding of the uranium traces on tubing samples provided by North Korea would further complicate diplomacy with the secretive country, the Post said, citing US and diplomatic sources.
While acknowledging its plutonium-based weapons program, North Korea has persistently denied US allegations that it had engaged in inappropriate uranium-based activities.
Washington is trying to get North Korea to disclose details of all its nuclear programs, and Pyongyang has promised to make a declaration by December 31 as part of a wider deal to abandon the pursuit of nuclear weapons in exchange for economic and diplomatic benefits from the United States and others, reported Reuters.
US negotiators will be forced to demand a detailed explanation about use of the tubes from Pyongyang, which has maintained it acquired thousands of them for conventional uses, the Post said, citing unnamed sources.
Washington has said the tubes were evidence that North Korea had a clandestine uranium weapons program because they could be used as outer casings for centrifuges needed to process uranium gas into weapons fuel.
The State Department and a spokesman for the director of national intelligence declined to comment on the uranium finding, the Post said.
While the tubes could have picked up uranium traces from an active enrichment program, the traces also could have come from exposure to other equipment or people exposed to both sets of equipment, the Post said, citing a former UN weapons inspector.
For example, the Post said, Pakistan has acknowledged providing North Korea with a sample centrifuge kit so the tubes could have picked up enriched uranium from Pakistani equipment.

TAIPEI, Taiwan, Dec 22--Taiwan’s President Chen Shui-bian on Saturday rebuffed criticism from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that a planned referendum on UN membership was provocative and raised tensions with China.
“There is absolutely no provocative policy but only a policy that respects public opinions. It is not Taiwan that is acting provocative today, it is China,“ Chen said.
“Taiwan is not a part of China or a province of the People’s Republic of China. But China has adopted the ’anti-secession law’ to provide a legal basis to use force against Taiwan and it currently targets Taiwan with more than 988 missiles,“ he added.
The two sides split after a civil war in 1949 but China still regards the island as part of its territory and in 2005 passed an anti-secession law which provided the legal framework for retaking Taiwan by force, AFP said.
Rice on Friday called Taiwan’s referendum on seeking UN membership a “provocative policy“ in the latest criticism on the move from the international community.
“It unnecessarily raises tensions in the Taiwan Strait and it comes with no real benefits for the people of Taiwan on the international stage. That is why we oppose this referendum,“ Rice said in Washington at a year-end press conference.
Chen’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is pushing for the controversial vote to be held alongside the March 22 presidential elections, despite opposition at home and abroad.
DPP presidential hopeful Frank Hsieh stressed that the party could not put a stop to the vote despite the opposition as it was endorsed by more than two million Taiwanese people.
“A great task is usually very difficult to accomplish and this is a test of the endurance and faith of the Taiwanese people,“ Hsieh said.

LIMA, Peru, Dec. 22--Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, on trial over murder charges, apologized for any abuses committed during his 1990-2000 regime--but accepted no responsibility for them.
“I do apologize, now that we are in this process, to all of those victims ... those victimized by the forces of order as well as those by the Shining Path and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement,“ he said, referring to two violent leftist rebel groups crushed during his presidency.
He added that learning about massacres “hurt me deeply, I have personally seen who knows how much.“
Fujimori faces charges that he knew of or gave orders to an army death squad known as the Colina Group that killed 25 people in two massacres, in 1991 and 1992, AFP reported.
Fujimori’s daughter Keiko, a leading member of Congress who was in the courtroom, clarified her father’s statements. By apologizing the ex-president laments the abuses, but “that does not mean that he assumes responsibility“.
“It is a humane gesture,“ said Keiko Fujimori.
Relatives of Colina Grou victims gathered in the court room rejected the apology.
“There is no way that we can accept that hypocritical gesture from the ex-president,“ said Gisela Ortiz, spokeswoman for the relatives.
Ortiz noted that Fujimori may have apologized but did not ask for forgiveness.
“Fujimori had 15 years to ask for forgiveness, but he did not do it,“ she said. “On the contrary, he rewarded the authors of these massacres by issuing a pardon.“
In 1995, Fujimori signed a blanket amnesty law for crimes that may have been committed by the military and police in the war against Peru’s insurgency, and set the members of the Colina Group--jailed earlier after mounting public pressure--free.

Lebanese army troops guard a street leading to the Lebanese parliament in downtown Beirut, Dec. 21.

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Dec. 22--A Lebanese presidential election scheduled for Saturday has been postponed until December 29, the parliament speaker said, the tenth delay to the vote.
The Western-backed ruling coalition and the Hezbollah-led opposition have agreed on army chief General Michel Suleiman as president, but they are still at odds over how to share power in the new government to be formed once he takes office, Reuters said.
The repeatedly delayed vote cannot take place without a two-thirds quorum in parliament, which can only be secured by a deal between the anti-Syrian majority and the opposition, backed by Damascus.
The post has been vacant since pro-Syrian Emile Lahoud’s term expired on November 23.
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a leading opposition figure, said in a statement the next session was scheduled for December 29 at 12 p.m. (5 a.m. EDT).
The opposition wants guarantees it will have veto power in the new cabinet to be formed once Suleiman is elected.
But majority leader Saad Al-Hariri said this week he opposed the idea.

BANGKOK, Thailand, Dec. 22--Thailand was poised Saturday for the first election since last year’s bloodless coup, under the close watch of the military and the looming shadow of deposed prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
The generals who toppled Thaksin’s twice-elected government in September 2006 say Sunday’s polls will restore democracy in Thailand, where about 45.7 million people are eligible to vote, reported AFP.
But observers question how free and fair the elections can be as more than one-third of the country, including Thaksin’s strongholds in rural northeastern provinces, is still under martial law.
“This is not a normal election. It is being held under pressure from the military,“ said Ukrist Pathmanand, professor of political science at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.
“There have been no real policy discussions in this election. The only issue here is whether you love Thaksin or hate Thaksin,“ he said.
Despite living in London in self-imposed exile since the coup, Thaksin, 58, remains the dominant figure in Thai politics.
His political allies in the People Power Party (PPP) said at their final rally in Bangkok late Friday that Thaksin would return to Thailand for the first time on February 14, after a new government is formed.
“Thaksin said if he came back before the government is formed, he would be accused of trying to make more trouble,“ PPP’s deputy leader Chalerm Yoobamrung told the cheering crowd.
On Saturday, the leader of the PPP’s main rival Democrat Party, Abhisit Vejjajiva, said Thaksin should return to Thailand earlier.
“If I become prime minister, I will make contact with him. Thaksin should return before February 14,“ he told reporters in Bangkok.