NATO is pressed to help in Afghanistan

TORONTO - Canada will extend its military mission in Afghanistan only if another NATO country puts more soldiers in the dangerous south, the prime minister said yesterday, echoing the recommendation of an independent panel to withdraw without additional forces. Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government is under pressure to withdraw its 2,500 troops from Kandahar province, the former Taliban stronghold, after the deaths of 78 soldiers and a diplomat. The mission is set to expire in 2009 without an extension by Canadian lawmakers. The panel, led by John Manley, recommended last week that Canada continue its mission only if another NATO country musters 1,000 troops for Kandahar. (AP)

KABUL - Some 300 Afghans have died in the past 10 days from bitter cold and heavy snow across the country, the Health Ministry said yesterday. Officials said the dead included nomads who live in tents and villagers cut off from food and medical aid because heavy snow had blocked roads. Faryab province in northwest Afghanistan is covered in a 20-inch-deep blanket of snow, said Governor Mohammad Omar. (AP)

ISTANBUL - Turkey's ruling party agreed with an opposition party yesterday to lift a decades-old ban on Islamic head scarves in universities of the mainly Muslim but secular nation. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling party and the Nationalist Action Party said in a joint statement that the two parties agreed to make changes in the constitution and the Higher Education Law to allow female students wearing head scarves into universities. A constitutional change would need a two-thirds majority. The two parties have more than enough legislators. Wearing of head scarves in universities was first banned shortly after a military coup in 1980. (AP)

MADRID - A Moroccan suspected of direct involvement in the 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people was arrested on Sunday in Rabat, a judicial source in Spain familiar with the case said yesterday. Abdelilah Hriz, 29, will be tried in his home country for his suspected part in Europe's deadliest Islamist attack, the first time Morocco has agreed to try one of its citizens for crimes allegedly committed abroad, said the source. Spanish Judge Juan Del Olmo recently traveled to Morocco to question Hriz and take DNA samples, the Moroccan state news agency MAP said last month. (Reuters)

DAMASCUS - A Syrian court charged 10 dissidents yesterday with undermining the state because they took part in a meeting to galvanize opposition to President Bashar al-Assad, their lawyers said. "They looked wretched but their morale was high," said one lawyer, Mohanad al-Hassani. The 10, mostly writers and doctors, are in the vanguard of a younger generation of a dissident movement repeatedly crushed by the authorities. They have been held for six weeks at the headquarters of one of Syria's many intelligence services. (Reuters)