The all-out US assault on Fallujah is likely to be delayed until after the US presidential elections, but British Prime Minister Tony Blair may face a decision before then on whether UK troops will provide a support role in the US sector, British government sources said on Tuesday.
UK ministers have been caught badly off balance by the widespread assumption that they were preparing to bolster the US military as a political demonstration of support for President George W. Bush ahead of the Nov. 2 poll.
Amid signs of a serious parliamentary revolt among members of the ruling Labour party, the government would like to defer a decision until after the US election.
Ministers were holding talks with Labour party MPs on Tuseday night to forestall a full-scale rebellion, reassuring them the request had come from the military and was totally focused on ensuring credible nationwide elections in Iraq.
A delay in the US assault would make it easier for Blair to sell any British move into the more dangerous zone south of Baghdad as purely part of the overriding imperative to improve security ahead of the Jan. 31 poll.
The British military reconnaissance on Tuesday in the area south of Baghdad may emerge with specific recommendations within days, including a timetable for British troop movement north.
The government has ruled out a vote on shifting British troops, but the opposition Liberal Democrats want to find a parliamentary vehicle to test MPs' opinion.
UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Britain was looking at the US request sympathetically. Speaking at a joint press conference with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, he stressed the UK was not planning to increase its overall troop strength in Iraq.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
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