Mary J. Loney blog

The U.N. Security Council unanimously agreed Thursday to send 3,100 more peacekeeping troops to Congo, while rebels said they remained committed to a pullback from the front lines despite an army attack.

British Ambassador John Sawers said the 15-nation council wants to help contributing nations “as best we can in getting troops on the ground rapidly” once they decide to help out.

“Exactly how many weeks it will be, it’s not clear. But this is a matter of urgency,” Sawers said.

Countries have not worked out yet who will contribute the additional troops and police.

Several African nations such as Senegal, Kenya and Angola are among those that could contribute extra troops, council diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity because talks are still under way.

The Congo peacekeeping mission, the world’s largest such U.N. contingent, is currently authorized to have 17,000 peacekeeping soldiers and police in the vast Central African nation. Even so, they have been spread thin in an area as large as Western Europe and have been unable to stop the fighting.

Years of sporadic violence in eastern Congo intensified in August, when fighting heated up between the army and fighters loyal to rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, and at least 250,000 people have been displaced.

Nkunda says he is protecting Tutsis from Hutus who fled to Congo after Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. But critics say he is more interested in power and accuse his forces of committing multiple human rights abuses.

Some fear the current crisis could once again draw in neighboring countries. Congo’s devastating 1998-2002 war split the vast nation into rival fiefdoms and involved half a dozen African armies.

On Thursday, rebels said they had fended off an attack from the army, pro-government Mai Mai militias and Rwandan Hutu rebels.

Rebel spokesman Bertrand Bisimwa said their troops were attacked in Katoro, a small village near Kiwanja, about 45 miles (70 kilometers) north of Goma. Rebels fended off the attack after two hours “and the situation is now calm,” Bisimwa said.

He said rebels were still committed to keeping their troops pulled back from front lines further north, but warned: if the U.N. peacekeeping force “is not able to keep quiet in this area … we’ll go and attack these groups who are trying to take control of that area.”

The report of fighting came a day after rebels pulled hundreds of fighters back from several front-line positions as promised in what the U.N. said was a welcome step toward brokering peace.

Iraq’s parliament persevered Thursday in its debate on a proposed security agreement with the United States despite raucous attempts by opposition lawmakers to disrupt proceedings ahead of next week’s vote on the deal.

The measure, which would keep U.S. forces in Iraq for another three years, has a good chance of passing in the Shiite-led parliament. But the uproar created by loyalists of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr suggests the pact could remain divisive as the country struggles for reconciliation after years of war.

If al-Sadr’s group and other legislators opposed to the pact lose by a thin margin in the vote planned for Monday, they might attempt to turn their anti-American message into a defining issue in provincial elections on Jan. 31 and general elections late in 2009. His followers planned a major rally Friday in central Baghdad to protest the security deal, which they view as a surrender to U.S. interests.

The demonstration slated for Firdous Square, where U.S. Marines tore down a statue of Saddam Hussein in one of the iconic images of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, is certain to heighten tension in the streets. But the agitation on Thursday was focused on parliament in the heavily protected Green Zone, where opposition lawmakers shouted and pounded desks in a second day of chaotic proceedings.

“The agreement ushers in a new occupation of Iraq, the duration of which we cannot tell,” said Ajeel Abdul-Hussein, the senior Sadrist lawmaker.

In fact, the terms of the pact establish for the first time a clear timetable for the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. They must be out of cities by June 30, 2009, and the entire country by the end of 2011. It would also give Iraqi authorities far more oversight over the U.S. military presence than they currently have.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has publicly defended the pact twice this week, first in a nationally televised address Tuesday and then in a news conference Thursday at which he said the deal would eventually lead to full sovereignty.

Al-Maliki noted that the pact allowed for the restoration of Iraq’s control of its airspace. As it stands now, he said, even his own plane or one carrying the Iraqi president needs clearance from the Americans to fly.

The withdrawal timetable before parliament could be moved up, but delaying the departure dates is nonnegotiable, al-Maliki said. He warned the alternative to the pact - a renewal or an extension of the U.N. mandate providing legal cover for U.S. forces in Iraq - is worse. The mandate expires Dec. 31.

“The danger of an extension is the removal of Iraq’s sovereignty and facing the same problem again, which will drive us back to searching for another agreement” with the Americans, al-Maliki said.

On Thursday, Sadrist lawmakers made as much noise as possible in an attempt to drown out a lawmaker reading the agreement aloud. Shouting matches broke out, but the chaos died down after 20 minutes.

Parliament eventually completed the reading. It was the last step before opening debate on the pact, though disruptions so far could delay Monday’s planned vote by a day or two.

Iraq’s most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, said the deal would be acceptable only if approved by a wide margin in parliament. Al-Sistani enjoys enormous influence among Iraq’s Shiite majority.

The Cabinet approved the agreement last weekend, meaning the pact stands a good chance of passage in the 275-seat parliament where the government’s parties dominate. But for al-Maliki’s Dawa party and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, its senior government partner, the margin of support is almost as important as the victory itself. A narrow vote for approval will cast doubt on the legitimacy of the new terms governing the U.S. troop presence.

Ali al-Adeeb, a Shiite lawmaker close to al-Maliki, said it was necessary for American forces to remain in Iraq because of the insurgency even if the government, like opposition lawmakers, saw the U.S. presence as “unwanted.”

If the agreement passes the legislature, it still requires the ratification of the president and his two deputies.

Also Thursday, the U.S. military said a leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, blamed in the 2004 abduction and murder of Army reservist Staff Sgt. Matt Maupin of Batavia, Ohio, had been killed.

The military said Hajji Hammadi also was the mastermind of a June 26 attack that killed three U.S. Marines, two interpreters and more than 20 Iraqis in western Anbar province.

It said U.S. forces killed Hammadi and another armed insurgent on Nov. 11 in Baghdad.

In a separate development, the military said an American Marine died as the result of a non-combat-related incident west of Baghdad. The Marine was not identified pending notification of relatives.

The death raises to at least 4,201 members of the U.S. military who have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

U.S. troops in Afghanistan launched a barrage of artillery at insurgents attacking their position from inside Pakistan’s volatile tribal region, in a cross-border strike coordinated with Pakistan’s military, U.S. and NATO officials said Tuesday.

The strike less than a mile inside Pakistan came after the militants fired rockets at a U.S. position in Afghanistan. Al-Qaida and Taliban militants have long found refuge in the border region, where they launch attacks on U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Sunday’s operation highlights growing cooperation between Afghan, Pakistani and U.S. officers, military officials said.

Coordination meetings have resumed between Afghan, Pakistani and U.S. officers, while the U.S. has deployed extra troops to help seal the border while Pakistan’s military conducts an offensive against militants in Bajur, an unruly tribal area that is a rumored hiding place of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

“This recent event is yet another example of our close cooperation with Pakistan’s military and our (Afghan National Security Forces) partners in responding to a common enemy,” said Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green, a U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan.

Sunday’s operation came at an especially sensitive time, with a surge in U.S. missile strikes deepening already widespread antipathy among Pakistanis toward the presence of Western forces in the region.

Pakistan, which has publicly protested the missile strikes, would not confirm any military operation on its side of the frontier - an indication of the delicate balance it has struck in the face of public discontent over its role in the U.S.-led war on terror.

Since mid-August, the United States is suspected of launching 19 missiles from unmanned drones based in Afghanistan, killing scores of suspected extremists and angering the Pakistani government.

On Sunday, U.S. troops in the Bermel area in Afghanistan’s eastern Paktika province fired 20 rounds into Pakistan after insurgents across the border launched the rockets at their outpost, officials said. The U.S. troops were there as part of a NATO-led force.

The artillery barrage hit nearly 1,200 feet inside Pakistan, said a NATO spokesman, who requested anonymity in line with NATO regulations.

A secondary explosion where the artillery barrage was directed indicated the site contained additional munitions, a NATO statement said. It did not say if there were any militant deaths.

In an official statement on Tuesday, the Pakistani military said only that a NATO outpost was attacked by militants Sunday and that NATO troops “engaged the fleeing militants” on the Afghan side of the border, while informing a Pakistani military post of their actions.

Asked whether any strike occurred inside Pakistan, a Pakistani army spokesman refused to go beyond the statement.

Over the past month, NATO and Pakistani forces have been cooperating in so-called Operation Lion Heart - a series of complementary operations that involve the Pakistani military and Frontier Corps, and NATO on the Afghan side, said Col. John Spiszer, U.S. commander in northeast Afghanistan.

“What we have done is worked very hard to refocus our … intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance assets to do everything we can to identify transiting across the border,” he told a Pentagon news conference in Washington.

Speaking by video conference from Nangahar Province, he said the cooperating military forces were working to stop “any enemy forces that are either coming this way trying to escape Pakistan or going that way trying to reinforce into Pakistan.”

Commanders hope pressure on both sides of the border will eventually mean militants will be “running out of options on places to go,” Spiszer said.

Meanwhile, clashes in Pakistan and Afghanistan killed more than 30 people, officials said Tuesday, including seven killed Monday after Pakistani Taliban attacked pro-government tribal elders.

The gunbattle in Bajur killed a Taliban commander as well as two guards of the elders’ compound, said Israr Khan, a government representative. Four elders also died when an explosion hit the compound, he said. It was unclear what caused the blast.

In Afghanistan, insurgents in western Farah province ambushed an Afghan army supply convoy, killing five troops and wounding five others, said Gen. Fazludin Sayar, the army commander for the western region. Sayar said five insurgents also died in the clash in Farah’s Bala Buluk region on Monday.

Insurgent attacks in Afghanistan are up 30 percent from 2007, military officials say. A tally of official figures provided to The Associated Press show that more than 5,400 people have died in insurgency-related vi