KABUL (Reuters) –
Afghanistan is repositioning forces to the south after complaints too few are involved in major U.S. and British offensives against the Taliban, officials said on Wednesday, even as clashes erupted in the north.

Afghan troops battled a group of Taliban fighters dug into a valley in northern Kunduz on Wednesday, Defense Ministry spokesman Zaher Azimi said. He said fighters loyal to a wanted al Qaeda-linked Uzbek leader had entered the north recently.

With violence this year hitting its highest levels since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, thousands of U.S. Marines and British troops launched assaults in the southern Taliban stronghold of Helmand this month.

The new offensives are the first major operations under U.S. President Barack Obama's new regional strategy to defeat the Taliban and its militant Islamist allies and stabilize Afghanistan, which holds a presidential election on August 20.

The aim of the operations in Helmand is to clear the vast province of insurgents and hold the ground it wins, something overstretched NATO forces have so far been unable to do.

But the offensives underscored weaknesses in the Afghan security forces, with only about 650 fighting alongside some 4,000 U.S. Marines and a similar number of British troops in Helmand, which produces most of the opium that funds the Taliban-led insurgency.

Brigadier General Lawrence Nicholson, commander of U.S. Marines in Afghanistan, complained about a week after Operation Strike of the Sword began in Helmand that there were not enough Afghan troops involved. "You can do the math," he said.

He said many more were needed to build relations with local leaders, a major part of a new counter-insurgency strategy under General Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and identify Taliban members hiding among residents.

Azimi blamed the media for complaints about the paucity of Afghan troops fighting in Helmand and said security forces were stretched to their limit combating insurgents across the country.

He said an extra battalion of about 700 troops was being sent to join the fight in Helmand. Afghanistan already has more than 5,000 troops in the province, he said.

"We are sending an extra battalion to Helmand, it is en route and, with its arrival, the number of Afghan forces will exceed 6,000 in Helmand," Azimi told a media conference.

ATTACKS CLIMB SHARPLY

Afghanistan's army totals about 95,000 troops, with the number to increase by about 5,000 by year's end.

The United States has about 58,000 troops in Afghanistan, with another 39,000 from NATO and other non-U.S. coalition members bringing the total of foreign forces to about 97,000.

Washington plans to increase its troop levels to 68,000 by year's end, more than double the 32,000 at the end of 2008.

Nicholson has said there were also problems with the quality of Afghan police units. Under Obama's new strategy, 4,000 more troops are also being sent to train Afghan security forces.

Violence has spiked across the country since the operations in Helmand began, with attacks against the military and civilians climbing sharply.

U.S. and British troops in Helmand and elsewhere have so far borne the brunt of the Taliban backlash. Record death tolls have prompted questions in London and Washington about strategies in Afghanistan and how long troops should remain.

In Berlin, German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung said about 300 German soldiers had joined a week-long offensive against the Taliban around Kunduz, their biggest operation to date, in a bid to improve security before the election.

Azimi said Afghan troops had besieged a group of insurgents entrenched in Char Dara, a valley in Kunduz, on Wednesday, part of wider operations against militants. He said 13 Taliban fighters and four soldiers had been killed.

Afghanistan's north has generally been regarded as more peaceful than the Taliban strongholds in the south and east but there has been a spate of attacks against foreign and Afghan forces in recent weeks.

Azimi said the increase in Taliban attacks in the north was partly in response to an agreement reached in Moscow this month to allow Washington to fly troops and supplies for Afghanistan across its territory, opening an important northern supply route.

It also followed the announcement a month ago of an escalation of operations by Pakistan's army against insurgents in the tribal areas of Waziristan, he said.

Azimi said fighters loyal to Tahir Yuldash and other insurgents had also moved into the north to disrupt the August presidential poll. Yuldash and his Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan fighters were given shelter by the Taliban before 2001.

(Additional reporting by Erik Kirschbaum in BERLIN; Editing by Paul Tait)

JACKSON, Miss. – The Salvation Army is struggling with dwindling donations across the country that will make it hard to give long-term assistance after a disaster, and a spokesman for the charity says "we have to hope and pray" this year's hurricane season is mild.
The organization will continue to provide the basics — food, water and shelter, said Maj. George Hood, the Salvation Army's national spokesman. But it isn't likely to offer more costly recovery aid, such as the $10,000 grants that were given to Hurricane Katrina victims to help them repair their homes. The religious charity also has given mortgage, rent and downpayment assistance to disaster victims in the past.
The Salvation Army's cost-cutting moves include plans to close two offices along the Hurricane-prone Gulf coast: one in Mississippi's Hancock County Aug. 28 and one in Metairie, La., in December. Both were Katrina recovery centers.
Hood said the moves were made by local divisions of the charity.
"The problem is the economy," Hood said, adding that the agency will still be able to offer basic services in a crisis. "If and when we have a hurricane, the Salvation Army will be there. We'll be mobilized."
Still, even last year, Hood said the organization was unable to offer as much sustained help in the aftermath of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike as in years past.
The charity usually raises $50 million to $75 million for a single hurricane relief effort, but last year, it raised only $13 million for the entire season, Hood said.
The 2009 Atlantic hurricane season began June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts a near-normal season, with a chance of four to seven hurricanes with up to three of them being major storms.
Lea Stokes, deputy director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, said the Salvation Army's diminished resources could mean delays for families — and communities — struck by storms because it is one of the nation's biggest disaster relief organizations.
"Federal assistance does not completely replace everything you've lost in a disaster. It only helps you get back on your feet," Stokes said. "The majority of families who are disaster survivors are going to rely on the nonprofit organizations, such as the Salvation Army, to help them rebuild their lives."
Laura Tuggle of Southeast Louisiana Legal Services said Katrina victims got valuable assistance from the charity, which even helped people buy appliances and cleanup supplies and provided rent and moving expenses.
"That function is really critical. If that wasn't going to be around, that would be a major loss," she said.
In Mississippi's Hancock County, Brian Adam, director of the county's Emergency Management Agency said the loss of the local Salvation Army office would hurt the community's storm response efforts.
"Certainly during hurricane season, this is a big deal," Adam said.
Adam said the Salvation's Army presence in his emergency operating center during and after storms saves his responders from having to track down relief volunteers to get information about food and shelter needs in the community.
Some of the other major charities that respond to disasters say they're in solid shape going into hurricane season.
American Red Cross spokeswoman Laura Howe said her nonprofit has raised more than $90 million of a $100 million campaign.
"The economy has been tough, but we feel like we're in a really good place to provide strong and consistent disaster response this year," Howe said.

Roger Conner, a national spokesman for Catholic Charities USA, said his group also expects it will be able to provide the same level of disaster relief as in years past.

In some areas of the country, the Salvation Army's iconic red kettles, usually seen during the holiday season, have made an early appearance. Twenty-one cities in 10 states including Iowa, New York and Ohio, are participating in the "Kettles in July" effort, though it's not a national campaign, said Jaime Joswick, a national spokeswoman for the charity. The goal is to help meet an increased need in services for people hit by the slumping economy.

Kevin Smith, the Salvation Army's disaster coordinator for the Florida Division, said the organization has made it through tight economic times before. "That does not stop us from responding to basic services."

Mark Jones, the spokesman for the Salvation Army in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama, said there are still four offices on the Mississippi coast. He said the two offices that will close were opened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and that recovery effort is coming to an end.

"We're not ceasing the availability of social services. We're just relocating them as part of cost-cutting measures," Jones said, adding that clients could travel 20 to 30 miles to the Gulfport, Miss. office for service.

Hood said he's trying to stay optimistic.

"I thank God every day there hasn't been a tropical depression yet."

WASHINGTON – House Democrats put their divisions on display over the details and timing of health care legislation Tuesday despite fresh attempts by President Barack Obama to hasten a compromise on the issue that looms increasingly as a major test of his clout.
With a self-imposed deadline for action in jeopardy, the Democratic leadership juggled complaints from conservatives demanding additional cost savings, first-term lawmakers upset with proposed tax increases and objections from members of the rank-and-file opposed to allowing the government to sell insurance in competition with private industry.
"No one wants to tell the speaker that she's moving too fast and they damn sure don't want to tell the president," Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., a key committee chairman, told a fellow lawmaker as the two walked into a closed-door meeting. The remark was overheard by reporters.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., vowed weeks ago that the House would vote by the end of July on legislation to meet two goals established by Obama months ago. The president wants legislation to extend health coverage to the tens of millions who now lack it, at the same time it restrains the growth in the cost of health care far into the future.
The president also has vowed that the legislation will not swell the deficit, although a senior administration official told reporters Tuesday that the pledge does not apply to an estimated $245 billion to increase fees for doctors serving Medicare patients over the next decade.
Peter Orszag, the White House budget director, said that was because the administration always assumed the money would be spent to avert a scheduled cut of 21 percent in doctor's fees.
At the White House, Obama and moderate and conservative Democrats verbally agreed on "some type of hybrid of a Medicare advisory council," said Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark. Obama last week urged lawmakers to adopt something along those lines, saying it would slow the growth in the health care program for seniors.
In the Senate, a small group of bipartisan lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee met behind closed doors, pursuing an elusive agreement.
Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, described the process as a grinding one. "Basically, it's filling in the blank pages. There are about a thousand" of them, she said.
It was unclear when — or whether — the White House or Democratic leadership would intervene in hopes of expediting legislation that has yet to materialize despite months of negotiations led by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.
But increasingly, it appeared that the best Democrats could hope for this summer would be a vote in the full House by the end of the month, and some sort of agreement on a bipartisan plan in the Senate before lawmakers head home for their summer vacation.
Even that remained a difficult challenge, though.
"If we can get to consensus, we're going to move," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told reporters. "If we can't get to consensus, we're going to continue to work on creating consensus."
At the White House, Obama clearly had Republicans in mind, not Democrats, when he demanded action.
"So I understand that some will try to delay action until the special interests can kill it while others will simply focus on scoring political points," the president said. "We've done that before. And we can choose to follow that playbook again, and then we'll never get over the goal line and will face an even greater crisis in the years to come."
He said that despite the controversy, months of debate have produced agreement on numerous health care issues, and he summoned lawmakers to complete the work.
"When we do pass this bill, history won't record the demands for endless delay or endless debates in the news cycle. It will record the hard work done by the members of Congress to pass the bill and the fact that the people who sent us here to Washington insisted upon change," he said.
Obama has spoken in public nearly every day for more than a week on the issue, some times more than once. At the same time Republicans have upped the political stakes.

On Monday, Michael Steele, the Republican chairman, likened Obama's proposals on health care to socialism, and said the chief executive wanted to conduct a "risky experiment" that will damage the nation's economy and force millions to lose the coverage they now have.

Last week, Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., was quoted as telling fellow conservatives, "If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him," a reference to the site of French Emperor Napoleon's defeat in 1815.

Given the struggle, the polls show slippage for Obama, although he remains popular.

Still, with details unsettled and Democrats in disagreement, the president is battling the impression if not the reality that his proposal is stalled.

He met at the White House during the day with so-called Blue Dogs, moderate and conservative Democrats whose call for additional cost savings has slowed work in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The panel is the only one of three that has yet to approve its portion of the legislation.

Separately, nearly two dozen first-term lawmakers have called for changes in tax increases in the legislation that would apply to individuals making more than $280,000 a year and couples over $350,000.

Pelosi said on Monday she favored a change so the tax wouldn't take effect until income reached $500,000, a statement that cheered Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., one of the lawmakers who had expressed concern.

But Rangel told reporters that neither Pelosi nor the rank-and-file critics have spoken with him about the suggested change. "I support what we have put out. If anybody has a problem with it I'm anxious to listen to it," he added.

In a measure of the complexity of the task, Orszag said conservative Democrats had reacted favorably to proposals to create an independent commission to recommend future increases in health care provider payments under Medicare.

It is one of only a few proposals in circulation that officials say has the ability to restrain the skyrocketing growth of health care costs.

But accepting such a proposal would require lawmakers to surrender their current power to set fees, which they can adjust to favor constituents.

"I think that we always need to be reminded that members of Congress don't serve under presidents, they serve with presidents," said Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass.

___

Associated Press writers Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Erica Werner, Charles Babington and Ben Feller contributed to this story.

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