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BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - Syria has withdrawn nearly a third of its 14,000 troops from Lebanon and the remainder were expected to be gone - as demanded by the Bush administration - before Lebanese parliamentary elections slated to begin next month, senior Syrian officials said Sunday. The 10,000 troops still in the country have mainly pulled back to the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, near the Syrian border. However, 1,000 intelligence officers remain in the country, mainly the north around Tripoli and Akkar and on the southern edge of Beirut. "The elections will take place and I think the troops...

Ukraine has announced the withdrawal of its troops from Iraq.The decision will see the pull-out of up to 1650 personnel from the country in three instalments. The first has seen 150 troops leave from an area near As Suwayrah on Saturday, according to reports. All troops are expected to be withdrawn by October. The removal of the Ukraine's forces - the sixth largest contingent in the United States' 'coalition of the willing' - was an election promise by the country's new president, Viktor Yushchenko. Ukraine has lost 18 soldiers in Iraq since committing troops in a decision by former president...

Kiev, March 12 (AP): Ukraine withdrew 150 servicemen from Iraq today, starting a phased pullout that officials have said will be completed by October, the Defence Ministry said. A company that was based near As Suwayrah left Iraq and is expected to return to Ukraine by Tuesday, the ministry said. Earlier this month, President Viktor Yushchenko and top defence officials ordered phased withdrawal of Ukraine's 1,650-strong contingent from the US coalition in Iraq. Ukraine strongly opposed the US-led war but later agreed to send a large contingent to serve under Polish command in central and southern Iraq. The move was...

THE PULLBACK: Syrian President Bashar Assad has announced a two-stage pullback of Syria's 15,000 troops to the Lebanese border, but did not respond to President Bush's demand that Syria withdraw all of its troops and agents before elections in May. CONFUSION: Assad has been vague, and it remains unclear if Syria would leave Lebanon or remain inside the country near the border. He said Syria and Lebanon would negotiate this week. CLARIFICATION? Syrian Immigrant Affairs Minister Buthaina Shaaban told Lebanese TV that withdrawal would be complete. "When an army withdraws it withdraws to inside the country's border." --

The humiliation of orphans, widows and converts; theft; kidnapping; and indirect causation of death are just a few of 14 or so biblical prohibitions that soldiers and police will transgress while evacuating Jews from Gaza and northern Samaria, according to a halachic opinion distributed by the Council of Rabbis of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip. The opinion, authored by Rabbi Shaul Bar-Ilan, head of the Kfar Darom kollel (yeshiva for married men), is unique in its exclusive focus on individual rights. Unlike other rabbis who have come out against the disengagement, not once does Bar-Ilan mention the commandment to...

Under intense pressure from the United States, the European community, Russia and the United Nations -- the so-called "Quartet" of world powers -- Israel is pursuing a suicidal course that may well cause the state to collapse, and place its five-million-plus Jewish inhabitants at the mercy of Arab enemies who mean them no good. To put the matter bluntly, a second Jewish Holocaust, only sixty to seventy years after Holocaust I, may be in the offing in the not-too-distant future. American Jews, and the American public as a whole, are completely oblivious to these horrific developments. Worst of all, the...

JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Cabinet began charting Israel's future borders in a historic session Sunday, giving final approval to a withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and a revised route for the West Bank separation barrier that would move Israel's border closer to that of its original frontier. With the vote, an Israeli government agreed for the first time since capturing the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Mideast war to dismantle some of the dozens of Jewish settlements it has built there. However, approving the route of the barrier, Israel acted unilaterally on what was to be...

BAGHDAD, Feb 7 (AFP) - The French ambassador to Iraq said Monday that a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops would boost the chances of getting all Iraqis involved in talks on a new constitution. "The presence of a horizon to end the presence of foreign forces would ease the participation of all Iraqis in the political process," Bernard Bajolet told reporters. He was speaking after meeting the head of Iraq's leading Sunni clerical organisation, which called for a boycott of last month's historic election. The Committee of Muslim Scholars has said it will only rejoin talks on a...

Iraqi Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr has called on his community's senior religious leaders to insist on a timeline for a US troop withdrawal."This is a message from Sayid Muqtada. I call on all religious and political powers that pushed towards the elections and took part in them to issue an official statement calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of the occupation forces from Iraq," Sayid Hashim Abu Raghif told worshippers gathered for Friday prayers in the Shia city of Kufa. Al-Sadr, who earlier belittled last week's vote, said he would no longer refrain from commenting on political developments in...

I watch in amazement, as Liberals in America once again call upon our government to “pull-out” of Iraq, leaving the Iraqi people to fend off terrorists on their own and I can’t help but notice the hypocrisy and ignorance of history in their chant… I thought liberals were the kinder, gentler Americans, always concerned with standing up for the down-trodden, looking after those in the world who are unable to care for or defend themselves? It appears their humanitarian zeal includes whales and seals, but not the people of Iraq… Though seemingly appalled at the abusive acts of a few...

Aaron Brown of CNN fame had Randy Beers, the key Kerry foreign policy advisor, on his show tonight to discuss the future of Iraq. Well, all he talked about was doom & gloom. Beers mentality was that the US was an occupier, not a liberator. The US was evil (my words). It was pure defeatism. Aaron asked him when should US troops leave Iraq. He said at the end of this YEAR or after UN sponsored elections which would be early 2006(my guess). So, Comrade Kerry’s policy in Iraq would have been cut and run. A Kerry Presidency would have...

WARSAW - Poland’s new foreign minister said on Thursday Warsaw would stick to plans to withdraw troops from Iraq by the end of the year. But Adam Rotfeld said if Iraqis and the international community saw a need for troops to remain longer to help transform the country, Poland’s next government may agree. “Our plan was already sketched out by several politicians ... who announced a withdrawal of our troops by the end of this year,” Rotfeld told private radio Zet. “Our military engagement in its present form will end, but if the international community, under the auspices of the...

KERRY’S TROUBLE WITH THE TROOPSKerry’s Timetable For Troops In Iraq Depends On What Time It Is___________________________________________________________APRIL 13, 2004: Kerry Writes, “If Our Military Commanders Request More Troops, We Should Deploy Them.”  “But to maximize our chances for success, and to minimize the risk of failure, we must make full use of the assets we have. If our military commanders request more troops, we should deploy them. Progress is not possible in Iraq if people lack the security to go about the business of daily life.”  (Sen. John Kerry, Op-Ed, “A Strategy For Iraq,” The Washington Post, 4/13/04)FIVE DAYS LATER: Kerry...

BERLIN - German officials voiced concern yesterday that their country has the most to lose with President Bush's announcement that thousands of troops will return to the United States over the next decade. With 70,000 U.S. soldiers based in Germany, thousands of local jobs depend on the Americans, who first came as occupying forces after World War II. European and Asian countries with U.S. troops have braced for the changes for several years, but Bush's announcement that up to 70,000 uniformed personnel and 100,000 dependents will be moved back to the United States brought home the full impact. "Base closures...

Thank You And Goodbye – I.D.F. Dedicated to my 21,790 Brothers and Sisters who fell in Israel’s Wars and Operations Early morning of Monday November 1, 1982, we said good-ye to my mother. An hour later, my father and I stopped in front of the Tel-Hashomer IDF recruit center near Tel-Aviv. I was 18, and I was joining the Israel Defense Forces (I.D.F) that morning. In the Israeli common language, this is the nightmare of every parent. Pride, mixed with pain and worry, for a child leaving the house for the first time. With wet eyes, the tough Paratrooper Colonel...

US already moving on pullout of DMZ as larger troop cuts loom in South Korea By Associated Press Wednesday, June 9, 2004 PANMUNJOM, Korea (AP) — The U.S. military is on track to pull almost all of its troops from their last outpost on the tense border with North Korea by October, a U.S. Army officer said Wednesday, amid discord over relocation plans. The two allies were also eyeing more negotiations over a separate U.S. proposal to remove a third of the 37,000 American troops in South Korea by the end of next year. The issues signal a new test...

ROME (AP) - President Bush, facing tough talks with U.S. allies, said Thursday it would be disastrous if they took their troops out of Iraq. Pulling out, Bush said, would send the wrong signals to the Iraqi people and to terrorists. "It would dispirit those who love freedom in Iraq," he said. Bush, standing alongside Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a strong ally on Iraq, made his comments at the White House before leaving Washington on the first leg of a three-day European trip. Howard renewed his intention to keep Australia's 850 troops in Iraq, despite political criticism in his...

There was some attention paid to Howard Dean's statements that Kerry would eventually have to decide to bring our troops home. But not enough attention to Kerry's own statements. Before meeting with Nader, Kerry made some remarks about not cutting and running, but that if he's elected our troops won't be involved in the kind of killing situation we are seeing now.It may sound innocuous enough to want our troops to not be exposed to dangerous combat, but to accomplish that in Iraq the only plausible way is to pull them out of combat. That means some major retreat from...

<p>LISBON, Portugal — Portugal will consider pulling its peacekeeping police out of Iraq if the fighting there worsens, the country's interior minister said Friday.</p> <p>"If, speaking theoretically, the conflict deepens and the police cannot carry out their mission, they will have to withdraw," Antonio Figueiredo Lopes (search) said in an interview with the public radio station Antena 1.</p>

CHICAGO - Faced with escalating turmoil in Iraq, George W. Bush spurns any talk of pulling out. "America will never run," he vows. Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, disagrees: "This disastrous mission must be ended before any more lives are lost. It is time to bring our troops home."