AFGHANISTAN: NATO TO EXPAND MISSION
Brussels, 8 Dec. (AKI) - Foreign ministers from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) countries have agreed to expand the presence of the alliance's peacekeeping troops in Afghanistan. The decision came after a meeting in Brussels, where the decision was made to deploy some 6,000 troops to the south of the country, making the presence in Afghanistan NATO's biggest ever mission outside of Europe. A third of the troops will be British and a new British-led NATO headquarters will also be established in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
NATO currently has some 11,000 troops deployed in Afghanistan, while the United States has nearly 20,000 soldiers.
"We have today agreed to move NATO's support for peace and security in Afghanistan to a new level," NATO foreign ministers said in a statement.
The expansion by NATO of mainly European and Canadian troops into some of the most dangerous parts of the country will allow the United States to scale back some of its own military presence in the country, although the Pentagon has not given any details on how many troops it is expected to withdraw. It is believed that the move will allow the US troops to focus on operations against Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
NATO troops are due to enter the south of Afghanistan by May.
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level.php?cat=Security&loid=8.0.237855520&par=0
Extremists detained in Tajikistan
19:54 2005-12-06
Members of the banned Uzbek Islamic Movement were arrested on Monday in the city of Khudzhand in northern Tajikistan.
"An Uzbek citizen, 37, and a Russian citizen from the Mordova
region, 41, who are accused of being members of the Uzbek Islamic Movement, were detained on December 5 in Khudzhand," a source from the Tajik Interior Ministry told.
"Six other people from northern Tajikistan were also detained," the
source said.
The men were detained while distributing leaflets calling for a
coup d'etat. The town of Khudzhand is an administrative center in the Tajik Sughd region. It borders on Uzbekistan and is the second largest city in the country.
The Uzbek Islamic Movement is an extremist organization, which says
it wants to establish an Islamic caliphate in the Central Asian countries.
Several dozen people suspected of links with the Uzbek Islamic
Movement and Hizb-ut-Tahrir have been arrested in Tajikistan since the beginning of 2005, Interfax reports.
http://newsfromrussia.com/cis/2005/12/06/69331.html