However NATO Defense Ministers attending this meeting will be told that they need to send many more military and police training teams if they are to achieve their aim of progressively handing responsibility for security over to Afghan forces.
The Electoral Commission in Iraq has delayed the start of campaigning for next month's parliamentary elections, after a court decision to
overturn
a ban on hundreds of candidates with alleged links to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. Gabriel Gatehouse reports from Baghdad.
Campaigning was
due to
start on Sunday, but the Electoral Commission says that that has now been delayed until the 12th of February. This is to allow time for emergency debate in Parliament and a court ruling on the fate around 500 candidates whose participation in the upcoming election is still uncertain. Until Tuesday, it looked like they’d be barred from standing due to alleged links to the Baath Party, the instruments through which Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq for so many years. But on Wednesday an appeal panel overturned the ruling—a decision that the government has called illegal and unconstitutional.
The White House says China and United States will continue to work together on major issues on which they sometimes disagree amid increase tension between the two countries. Referring to China’s reported reluctance to impose further sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme, a White House spokesman said it wasn’t in China’s interests to have a nuclear Iran, and that Unites States expected China to work with Washington on the next steps forward.