OSLO: Nobel Peace Prize winner Martti Ahtisaari urged U.S. President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday to start his term by giving ``high priority'' to the Mideast conflict, calling it the world's most challenging peace-building project.In his acceptance speech in Oslo, the Finnish diplomat and mediator also warned that the global financial crisis would strike hard at the developing world, and called on governments to not cut back on foreign aid.Insisting that ``all conflicts can be settled,'' Ahtisaari said he did not share the view that the decades-long violence between Israel and Palestinians would rage indefinitely.The 71-year-old former Finnish president was awarded what many consider the world's most coveted prize for his three decades of work mediating conflicts from Namibia to Kosovo and Indonesia. So far he has not sought a role to mediate in the Middle East. By selecting Ahtisaari for the prize, the Nobel committee returned its focus to traditional peace work after tapping climate campaigner Al Gore and the U.N. panel on climate change last year.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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