VILNIUS/KABUL, Afghanistan, Feb. 8--NATO tried to patch over divisions about the war in Afghanistan on Thursday but differences remained over the willingness of some members to contribute troops to the fight.
At a meeting in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, defense ministers with troops fighting fierce battles against the Taliban in the south of Afghanistan backed calls by the United States for more countries to send forces there, Reuters reported.
France said it was studying possible reinforcements and diplomats said Romania, Poland and Norway were among those who signaled they could do more. But, as widely expected, there was no formal offer of troops at the talks.
On a visit to frontline troops in the birthplace of the Taliban, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband also kept up the pressure on reluctant allies to share the combat burden.
Violence has risen sharply in the past two years in Afghanistan. Analysts say the country, which under the Taliban’s hardline rule harbored al Qaeda before the September 11 attacks, risks becoming a “failed state“ again.
NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the 43,000-strong ISAF peace force in Afghanistan had made progress but acknowledged more needed to be done.
“I am cautiously optimistic,“ he said. “There are challenges, we need more forces ... the situation in Afghanistan means sharing responsibility and sharing risk.“
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates toned down his rhetoric, a day after saying NATO was at risk of splitting into members who are willing to “fight and die to protect people’s security and those who were not.“
But he stuck to his basic point that there was a contrast between nations such as the United States, Britain, Canada, the Netherlands and Denmark, doing most of the fighting in the south, and other NATO nations in safer parts of Afghanistan.
“I came away from the meeting encouraged,“ he said. “I think everybody understands the nature of the problem.“
In Afghanistan, Rice dismissed independent reports that Afghanistan risked becoming a failed state and said “remarkable progress“ had been made. But she said the war would go on.
“This is a long war because the terrorists will not easily be defeated,“ she said.

Mourners carry the body of Palestinian teacher, Hani Naeem, killed by Israeli fire in Beit Hanun on Thursday.

GAZA CITY,
Occupied Palestine, Feb. 8--Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas offered to help negotiate a ceasefire as Israel pounded Gaza on Thursday, killing seven people days after a suicide bombing claimed by the Strip’s Hamas rulers.
Hamas promptly rejected the offer, with spokesman Fawzi Barhum branding it a “blackmail attempt against the Palestinian people whom (Abbas) has left to be massacred.“
Escalating violence has now seen 20 Palestinians, mostly militants, killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza and several Israelis, including two young children, wounded by militant rocket attacks during the past week, AFP said.
Abbas offered to help broker a ceasefire, his spokesman said, amid fears that the violence could undermine recently revived peace talks.
“President Abbas is prepared to try to work towards a mutual ceasefire with Israel to stop the daily slaughter confronting the Palestinian people in Gaza,“ Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP.
Abbas has repeatedly condemned both Palestinian rocket fire and Israeli strikes on Gaza, but he has little if any authority over the territory from which his security forces were ousted by Hamas in June 2007.
In one air strike on Thursday four militants--three from the armed wing of Hamas and another from Islamic Jihad--were killed near Jabaliya in northern Gaza by a missile fired from a drone.
A second air raid killed two militants near Tuffah, also north of Gaza City, and wounded four more, two of them seriously, medics said.
A teacher was also killed when a tank shell hit a high school in the northern town of Beit Hanun, medics said.
Hamas militants meanwhile launched at least 14 rockets and mortar bombs at Israel, with one lightly wounding two civilians, a day after two children aged two and four were wounded when a rocket hit their home in southern Israel.
On Thursday Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit warned that any Palestinians caught sneaking across the border “will have their legs broken,“ according to the official MENA news agency.
Israel has increasingly tightened restrictions on Gaza since the start of the second Palestinian uprising in 2000, notably in June 2006 after militants seized a soldier and a year later when Hamas took control.

Mitt Romney

WASHINGTON, Feb . 8--Republican Mitt Romney suspended his faltering presidential bid Thursday, effectively handing his party’s nomination to John McCain and sealing an exceptional comeback for a politician whose campaign was on the verge of collapse less than a year ago.
Romney’s decision marks a remarkable turnaround for McCain, a former Vietnam prisoner-of-war whose campaign some seven months ago was barely viable, out of cash and losing staff. The four-term Arizona senator, denied his party’s nomination in 2000, was poised to succeed George W. Bush as the Republican standard-bearer, AP said.
Preacher-turned-politician Mike Huckabee remains in the race, but is far behind in the delegate hunt.
McCain will face Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama, the chief Democratic rivals who are locked in an exceedingly tight battle for their party’s nomination.
Obama, who is seeking to be the first black US president, is riding a fundraising wave after his slew of wins in last Tuesday’s series of 22-state races. Clinton, meanwhile, has rallied to keep pace, loaning her campaign $5 million last month to fuel the costly White House race.
Romney, who sought to be the first Mormon US president, said he decided to drop out of the race to avoid hurting the Republican Party’s chances at taking the general election in November, suggesting that if Clinton or Obama were to win, US safety would be at stake.
In a sign of his renewed momentum and financial advantage, Obama, who secured 13 wins in the “Super Tuesday“ contest, announced Thursday that his presidential campaign had picked up $7.2 million since the first polls closed that day, as his rival and former front-runner Clinton indicated she was struggling to
keep up.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 8--British detectives said Friday that Benazir Bhutto was killed by the force of a suicide bomb and not gunfire backing the government’s account of how the Pakistani opposition leader was assassinated.
Scotland Yard said a lone attacker shot at Bhutto as she waved to supporters from the sunroof of her car at an election rally in Rawalpindi on December 27, before detonating explosives which were the cause of her death, AFP said.
Bhutto’s party immediately rejected the British findings, saying it still believed the two-time former premier was killed by an assassin’s bullet and reiterating calls for a UN inquiry into the killing.
“In essence, all the evidence indicates that one suspect has fired the shots before detonating an improvised explosive device,“ said the summary of the 70-page report delivered to Pakistani authorities earlier in the day.
“The blast caused a violent collision between her head and the escape hatch area of the vehicle, causing a severe and fatal head injury,“ signed by British Detective Superintendent John MacBrayne.
The British team of forensics and other experts spent two and a half weeks in Pakistan in January at the invitation of President Pervez Musharraf who said he wanted to end uncertainty over the manner of Bhutto’s death.

PARIS, Feb. 8--The French Parliament Friday approved the European Union’s new reformed treaty, turning the page on the crisis sparked in 2005 when rebellious French voters shot down the EU’s ill-fated constitution.
Both the National Assembly and Senate voted resoundingly in favour of the treaty, a tailored-down version of the constitution that was consigned to oblivion in French and Dutch referendums, AFP said.
It is now to be formally ratified by President Nicolas Sarkozy, who played a leading role in drawing up the new text.
France will be the fifth EU country--and the first major EU power--to ratify the new treaty, which must be approved in all 27 member states before it can come into force as planned in 2009.
France’s Europe Minister Jean-Pierre Jouyet described it as a “historic moment“ opening a fresh chapter in France’s relations with the EU as it prepares to take over the six-month presidency of the bloc in July.
“This is excellent news, a great victory for France which has gone from being the country holding up Europe to being the one that pulled Europe out of gridlock,“ said Sarkozy’s spokesman David Martinon.
Hungary was first to ratify the treaty in December, followed by Slovenia and Malta late last month and Romania which ratified the charter this week.
Sarkozy insisted the new treaty, signed in Lisbon in December, be ratified by parliament rather than risk a second referendum. But his refusal to submit it to popular scrutiny has fuelled anger across opposition ranks.

N’DJAMENA, Chad, Feb. 8--The government imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew Thursday across Chad and said it was scouring the capital for coup plotters and their accomplices who were in hiding after days of fighting killed hundreds and caused thousands to flee, AP reported.
President Idriss Deby called for the swift deployment of a European peacekeeping force whose arrival was delayed by the fighting. The European troops would guard nearly a half million refugees and Chadians displaced by violence in neighboring Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur region.
Prime Minister Nouradin Koumakoye announced the curfew a day after Deby insisted the government had total control of the country following a weekend coup attempt that brought rebels to the gates of the presidential palace. Soldiers forced the rebels out of the city Sunday.
Koumakoye told reporters the 6:30 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew was necessary to “restore calm in the country and deal with the damage done by the Sudanese army.“
Oil-rich Chad has repeatedly said neighboring Sudan is backing the rebels to try to prevent the European peacekeepers from deploying. Sudan has denied involvement, but has long resisted such a force.
Sudan’s security chief, Gen. Salah Abdullah Ghosh, was quoted by the official SUNA news agency as saying Khartoum was actually mediating to “reconcile Chadian parties and to end the current violence.“
The Chadian rebels accuse Deby of corruption and embezzling millions in oil revenue. While many Chadians may share that assessment, the uprising appears to be a power struggle within the elite that has long controlled Chad. Rebel leaders include Mahamat Nouri, a former defense minister, and Timan Erdimi, a nephew of Deby who was his chief of staff.
Koumakoye also said the government had identified residents of the capital who helped plan the rebel attack.
“The plotters and their accomplices are many in N’Djamena and are hiding, but the government knows their hiding places,“ he told reporters.

PRISTINA, Kosovo, Feb. 8--Kosovo appears set to declare independence in 10 days’ time, just ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers, sources in Pristina and observers say.
The authorities were “awaiting the green light from the West and consider the weekend before the EU meeting as the most probable date,“ according to a source close to the Kosovo government, AFP reported.
The European Union meeting on February 18 could approve the start of the deployment of an EU mission charged with supervising the initial phase of independence for the Albanian-majority southern province of Serbia.
“We are assuming (February) 17th or 18th,“ said a source close to the United Nations, which has run Kosovo since the end of its 1998-1999 war.
A US diplomat said independence was likely to be proclaimed on a Sunday, when the UN Security Council does not meet.
Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council, where it has warned it will use its veto powers to block any such declaration in support of its ally Serbia, which staunchly opposes Kosovo independence.