A DEFIANT Muammar Gaddafi said Libya is “ready for battle”, as Western leaders mulled yesterday their next steps on the fifth day of UN-backed military strikes on his oil-rich country.

It is not the first time the US would turn away from the alliance it founded. The NATO bombing campaign of Serbia in 1999, for example, was a terrible setback.

THE popularity of the United Nations mission running Kosovo has fallen to its lowest level in two years, a UN development agency poll showed yesterday, as Kosovo nears a decision on the province’s future that could see it become independent.

Russia’s security chief today said foreign intelligence agents were actively spying on Russia with the help of new Nato members.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is looking at developing closer relations with nations on the Pacific rim – Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea – as the alliance seeks to broaden its world role.

The NATO commander overseeing its operations in Pakistan today said the alliance’s disaster relief mission was complete, and it was to leave on schedule.

Nato today said it was scaling back its operations in Pakistan’s quake-hit region of Kashmir, as authorities issued avalanche and snowfall warnings promising more misery for survivors of October's devastating earthquake.

President George Bush welcomed seven former communist nations into Nato, saying the 55-year old Western alliance would be strengthened because “tyranny for them is still a fresh memory”.

ALONG with the State Papers released annually under the 30-year rule, other documents that should have been opened in previous years have also just been released.

OIL prices rose to a two-year high after Iraq said ‘no’ to United Nations peacekeeping troops in Iraq under a Franco-Germany strategy to avoid Gulf war II.

Nato must adapt to play a bigger role in the fight against global terrorism or risk becoming marginalised, an influential US politician warned today.

US President George W Bush intends to make deep reductions in nuclear weapons, perhaps without negotiating reciprocal cuts by Russia, officials said today.