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WASHINGTON—In declaring Tuesday that he would “finish the job” in Afghanistan, President Obama used a phrase clearly meant to imply that even as he deploys an additional 30,000 or so troops, he has finally figured out how to bring the eight-year-long conflict to an end. Ed Hardy chothing

But offering that reassuring if somewhat contradictory signal — that by adding troops he can speed the United States toward an exit — is just the first of a set of tricky messages Mr. Obama will have to deliver as he rolls out his strategy publicly.

Over the next week, he will deliver multiple messages to multiple audiences: voters at home, allies, the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the extremists who are the enemy. And as Mr. Obama’s own aides concede, the messages directed at some may undercut the messages sent to others.

He must convince Democrats, especially the antiwar base that helped elect him, and the slim majority of the country that tells pollsters the conflict is no longer worth the sacrifice, that in sending more troops he is not escalating the war L.B.J.-style. In fact, some of those involved in the deliberations on an Afghanistan strategy say Mr. Obama will argue that providing the additional numbers is the fastest way to assure that the United States will be able to “finish the job,” because it will speed the training of the Afghan national army.

But at the same moment, he must persuade Republicans that he is giving the military what it needs to beat back the Taliban and keep Al Qaeda from threatening the United States.

That would be a difficult task even if Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s strategic assessments and troop requests had not been paraded across front pages, including his contention that the task will require 40,000 or more troops if Mr. Obama wants to create true security in the country’s major population centers.

At a time when Mr. Obama is vowing to reduce sky-high deficits, he must make the case that the price tag — roughly $1 million per soldier — is justified. He already faced pre-emptive resistance on Tuesday from the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

So it is no surprise that one of Mr. Obama’s senior aides, speaking on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged Tuesday that the forthcoming speech was a “potential minefield.” One of his national security strategists put Mr. Obama’s challenge this way: The trick, he said, will be “signaling resolve to the allies while not signaling open-ended commitment to the American people.” UGG BOOTS

Both sides of that equation are complicated.

Mr. Obama must signal resolve — and staying power — because the Dutch and the Canadians are both scheduled to be pulling their troops out of Afghanistan just as Mr. Obama is putting more forces in. In quiet meetings over the past month, American defense and national security officials have been trying to forestall those departures, while obtaining commitments of increasing numbers of troops from NATO allies.

So far, the administration has been successful only with the British, who have pledged an additional 500 troops. Germany, Italy and other NATO contributors have been silent, explaining to their American visitors that the war has become so unpopular at home that they can barely sustain the troop levels now in place.

“I think we’ll get there,” said an official who has been sent for those conversations. “But not in time for the president’s announcement.” Others said it may be early next year before Mr. Obama can extract any additional commitments.

Pakistan poses a particularly difficult problem. Mr. Obama has been highly attuned to the need to declare that the United States is not in what he recently called “an open-ended commitment” in Afghanistan.

But for years, throughout the Bush administration and into the Obama administration, American officials have been making trips to Pakistan to reassure its government that the United States has no intention of pulling out of Afghanistan as it did 20 years ago, after the Soviets retreated from the country. Inside the Pakistani Army and the intelligence service, which is known as the ISI, it is an article of faith among some officers that the United States is deceiving them, and that it will replay 1989.

If that happens, some Pakistanis argue, India will fill the void in southern Afghanistan, leaving Pakistan surrounded by its longtime enemy. So any talk of exit strategies is bound to reaffirm the belief of some Pakistani officials that they have to maintain their contacts with the Taliban — their hedge against Indian encroachment.

So the United States is stuck, one official said, between not wanting to suggest it will be a military presence in the region forever and showing enough commitment to encourage Pakistan to change its behavior.

Mr. Obama has a similar signaling problem with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan. A parade of Washington officials, most recently Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, have traveled to Kabul to warn that continuing American help is dependent on the Afghan government’s meeting benchmarks in tackling corruption and building up credible security forces. But Mr. Obama is not likely to say what will happen if Mr. Karzai fails to deliver, for fear of further alienating the mercurial Afghan president.

At home, the more urgent issues are troop numbers and the cost of the escalation. Here, Mr. Obama will have more room to maneuver. Over the past two weeks, military officials have been expecting a decision that will give them roughly 34,000 additional troops, not far from what was sought by General McChrystal, the commander in Afghanistan. At the White House and among the allies, the figure most commonly heard is just under 30,000.

Both figures, and anything in between, could prove right. Counting support troops and “trainers” is an art form in the military. The troops will be dispatched in phases, and Mr. Obama is likely to declare that he will review the deployment next year, to evaluate its progress. Ed Hardy chothing

That gives him the flexibility to tell the Democrats that his commitment is limited, and to tell the Republicans that he will do whatever it takes to win what, only three months ago, he called a “war of necessity.”

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s tortuous effort to hold its parliamentary election on schedule in January collapsed Monday, raising the prospect of a political and constitutional crisis next year as the United States begins withdrawing the majority of its combat troops. Ed Hardy chothing
After two days of divisive sessions and failed talks, Parliament disregarded a veto by one of the country’s vice presidents and approved new amendments that the vice president promptly indicated he would veto as well.
The moves deepened a crisis that had fleetingly seemed resolved after months of wrangling over how to set up the vote, widely seen as a barometer of Iraq’s progress toward democracy.
The failure to agree on even the terms of the election has inflamed ethnic and sectarian tensions that had waned somewhat in the last year or so. The dispute underscored the depth of mistrust that remains despite improvements in security and campaign pledges by major coalitions to unite the country. “Now we have only bad choices,” Ahlam Asad, a Kurdish lawmaker who supported the new legislation, said as the closed-door parliamentary session ended.
The Parliament, or Council of Representatives, does not appear to have the necessary three-fifths majority to override a new veto, making it impossible, several senior lawmakers said, to hold the vote in January as required under the country’s Constitution.
The Obama administration and the American commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, have long planned the withdrawal of American forces around the expectation that the election would take place in January.
There are now roughly 120,000 troops in the country, and a significant withdrawal, known at the Pentagon as “the waterfall,” is scheduled to begin in the spring. Under President Obama’s policy, fewer than 50,000 troops are to remain after next August.
Last week, after Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi’s initial veto, General Odierno said he would “not have to make any decisions until about late spring.” Even so, it appears certain that the election will not be held until at least the start of the major withdrawal.
In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed hope that the election would be held though it “might slip by some period of time until this is worked out.” UGG BOOTS
American and United Nations diplomats tried frantically but failed to broker a compromise between Mr. Hashimi and lawmakers who accused him of trying to bolster Sunnis’ chances by widening a quota for Iraqis living abroad. The Parliament did not override Mr. Hashimi’s veto. Instead the Shiite and Kurdish blocs amended the election law — 133-17 — after Sunni and secular parties walked out of the session in protest. Of 275 lawmakers, 125 did not vote or did not attend, most of them Sunnis.
The vote reinforced divisions that have previously threatened to plunge the country into civil war, with Sunnis feeling disenfranchised by a Shiite-led government. Mr. Hashimi’s veto, intended to increase Sunni participation in the election, instead appeared to have rallied Shiites and Kurds to align against the Sunnis.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and his bloc supported the new law, having sharply criticized the veto. A Maliki spokesman, Ali al-Mousawi, said the prime minister favored holding an election as soon as possible.
The three-member Presidency Council, which includes Mr. Hashimi, President Jalal Talabani, and a second vice president, Adel Abdul Mahdi, now has 10 days to approve or veto the law.
“The government will keep working as it is right now, and we will not postpone the election too much,” Mr. Mousawi said. “The Council of Representatives has reached a new formula. If there is a veto, then it is going to be a different matter.”
The election is supposed to be held Jan. 30, 45 days before the Parliament’s constitutional mandate expires. The Constitution, written with American and other foreign help in 2005, allows a one-month extension.
In a country with little democratic precedent, what happens if a new Parliament has not yet been elected remains unclear. A sense of crisis loomed Monday, with lawmakers accusing one another of violating the Constitution for an electoral edge.
“It’s a conflict of wills,” Osama al-Nujaifi, a Sunni member of Parliament from Nineveh, said angrily after the vote, asserting that the new law would disenfranchise Sunni voters.
Many officials warned that the election could be delayed until March or even later. With an important Islamic holiday beginning this weekend, talks to resolve the dispute cannot begin until next month, after the Presidency Council reviews the new law. The Parliament does not have another session until Dec. 8, a spokesman for its speaker said.
Mr. Hashimi vetoed the first law over a clause that reserved 5 percent of parliamentary seats for small religious and ethnic minorities and Iraqi refugees abroad, many of whom are believed to be Sunnis opposed to the government. He said the quota should be raised to 15 percent.
In response, Shiite and Kurdish parties rewrote the rules for calculating the voter rolls and thus the distribution of seats — to their own benefit, according to Sunnis. The new law still reserves seats for minority groups, but counts Iraqis abroad in the provinces they fled from rather than as a separate quota.
Mr. Nujaifi said under the new law, Sunnis in Nineveh would lose as many as eight seats, assuming voting on ethnic lines. Nineveh and Kirkuk in the north include disputed territories claimed by Arabs and Kurds.
Some Sunnis suggested that the veto had backfired, leaving Sunnis living abroad in a worse position.
Mr. Hashimi sent a letter to Parliament on Monday that appeared to signal openness to a compromise, but it was not clear that the Shiite and Kurdish majority even discussed it. “Unfortunately the first law was unjust and irresponsible to the displaced people and those abroad,” Mr. Hashimi’s spokesman, Abdul Ellah Kadhim, said after the vote, “while now it is unjust and irresponsible to the people abroad and inside Iraq as well.” Ed Hardy chothing
The threat of violence, often with a political hue, remains ever-present in Iraq. And shortly after the vote, gunmen in a passing sedan fired at a motorcade belonging to the former prime minister, Ayad Allawi, a Shiite who recently aligned with Mr. Hashimi. Mr. Allawi was not in the motorcade at the time; two of his guards were wounded, according to the Interior Ministry.

CAIRO — A flurry of executions and death sentences in Iran has raised concern that the government is using judicially sanctioned killing to intimidate the political opposition and quell pockets of ethnic unrest around the nation, human rights groups and Iran experts said. Ed Hardy chothing

In Iran, where there is precedent for executions to surge in the wake of a crisis, human rights groups said there was mounting evidence that the trend had emerged in response to the political tumult that followed the June presidential election. This month, a fifth person connected to the protests was sentenced to death.

In at least one instance, a Kurdish activist was hanged after the government added a new charge, raising concerns that cases with political overtones were drawing more serious penalties.

In the short period between the disputed June election and the inauguration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in August, 115 people were executed, according to statistics compiled by human rights groups from Iranian news agencies. Though the executions mostly involved violent criminals and drug dealers, the number and pace of the killings appeared to be sending a message to the opposition, said human rights groups and Iran experts.

“The regime never expected to see people demonstrate so openly since the elections,” said Hossein Askari, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University. “The executions are intended to frighten them. It is absolutely intended for that purpose.”

The executions have taken place amid rising criticism of Iran’s postelection human rights record. Former officials, intellectuals and journalists have received long prison sentences after brief televised trials, and some prisoners have said they were tortured, raped and sodomized by prison authorities. UGG BOOTS

Muhammad Ali Abtahi, a former vice president, was sentenced last week to six years in prison “for crimes against internal national security, propaganda against the Islamic republic, insulting the president and creating public disorder by his presence at illegal protests,” a Web site on Iran reported. He was released on bail, pending appeal.

The United Nations passed a draft resolution last week criticizing Iran for numerous human rights abuses; the final resolution is expected to pass the General Assembly.

“The recent spike in executions, particularly of political prisoners, is an attempt to sow fear and spread terror through the population, to persuade them that the powers that be are determined to use all means necessary to put down dissent and that participating in the opposition movement can be highly costly,” said Hadi Ghaemi, a former physics professor who runs the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

In recent years, Iran has had the highest rate of executions of any nation except China. That reputation was solidified under President Ahmadinejad, who has presided over a quadrupling in executions, to 346 in 2008 from 86 in 2005, the year he took office, according to Amnesty International.

Iran does not release statistics on executions, so it is impossible to compare monthly or annual rates. But in recent days, there has been a flood of reports from around the country of executions, most involving convicted drug dealers or criminals. On Friday, news reports said that over the previous 10 days, 16 people had been executed in cities including Kerman, Isfahan and Ahwaz.

In mid-October, Behnood Shojaee, who was on death row for committing a murder four years ago at the age of 17, was executed despite international calls for his sentence to be commuted because he was a minor at the time of the crime.

Drewery Dyke, a researcher with Amnesty International, said that it was not unusual for Iranian officials to step up executions in the wake of a political crisis. In 1988, after Iran agreed to a cease-fire with Iraq, the government executed thousands of political prisoners not initially charged with capital crimes and already serving sentences in prison.

“There does seem to be a greater willingness across the spectrum for the authorities to deploy force in every way, from the police through to the administration of justice,” he said. “There seems to be that much higher level of ruthlessness.”

According to Amnesty International, there were 196 executions in Iran in the first half of 2009. Between the June 12 election and the president’s inauguration on Aug. 5, executions surged to an average of two a day, the group said. So far this year, there have been 359 executions, though an exact tally is hard to come by because the group compiles the data based on reports from government-affiliated news sources.

Since the postelection surge in executions, the government has moved aggressively to impose the death penalty on people linked to separatist insurgent groups, even when they have not been convicted of violent activities themselves, human rights groups said.

Concern about executions with political overtones increased with the case of Ehsan Fattahian, 28, who was convicted of belonging to an armed Kurdish group, rights groups said. He was originally sentenced to 10 years in prison, but then the government added the charge of being mohareb, or an enemy of God, and hanged him on Nov. 11.

His parents were not allowed to see his body and the authorities did not permit a public mourning service, opposition Web sites reported.

According to pro-Kurdish rights groups, a special execution team has been sent to the western province of Kordestan, where the groups said 12 Kurdish prisoners were awaiting the death penalty. It was impossible to verify that claim.

After Mr. Fattahian’s execution, a group of Kurdish members of Parliament wrote a letter asking the head of the judiciary to drop death sentences against other Kurdish prisoners, Iranian news agencies reported.

A spokesman at the Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York did not respond to two e-mail messages requesting comment on the use of the death penalty.

Since the election crisis, Iran has not allowed foreign reporters to work in the country. But Iranian officials have defended the death penalty in the past.

“We have laws,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said at an appearance at Columbia University in 2007. “People who violate the public rights of the people by using guns, killing people, creating insecurity, sell drugs, distribute drugs at a high level, are sentenced to execution in Iran, and some of these punishments — very few are carried in the public eye, before the public eye. It’s a law based on democratic principles.”

But Mr. Ghaemi of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said that often, death sentences are issued to defendants who have not been given a proper chance to defend themselves, in trials of questionable fairness and merit. Ed Hardy chothing

“There is growing fear that another jump in executions is under way,” he said. “Most troubling is that execution of political prisoners has resumed.”

With less than three weeks remaining before negotiators gather in Copenhagen to hammer out a global response to climate change, a rapid-fire succession of countries are unveiling national plans that serve as opening bids for reining in heat-trapping emissions. Ed Hardy chothing

“The list of what is on the table is rather long,” said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the sponsor of the meeting, which runs from Dec. 7 to 18 in Copenhagen.

But, speaking at the United Nations headquarters on Thursday, he seized on the latest pledges to take aim at the United States, which has not yet played its hand.

“We now have offers of targets from all industrialized countries except the United States,” Mr. de Boer said. He emphasized that he was looking to the United States for “a numerical midterm target and commitment to financial support.”

“This is essential, and I believe this can be done,” he said.

In an interview, Todd Stern, the chief climate negotiator for the United States, said that the Obama administration was trying to decide whether to release a proposal in the coming days.

“What we are looking at is whether we feel that we can put down a number that would be provisional in effect, contingent on getting our legislation done,” he said. “Our inclination is to try to do that, but we want to be smart about it.”

He noted that bills pending in Congress involved cuts of around 17 percent in emissions by 2020, increasing to much deeper cuts by 2030.

The United States has the highest per capita emissions in the world. China has the largest emissions over all and has also refrained from setting a specific emissions reduction target, although as a developing country it would not be required to do so under the current outlines of the treaty that is being proposed.

If neither China nor the United States made a commitment, the national plans of lesser emitters would have little practical effect.

Although the United Nations no longer believes that the Copenhagen meeting can come up with a binding treaty to control emissions this year, the event is viewed as a crucial forum for the world’s nations to demonstrate a commitment to addressing global warming and its potential impact.

This week, South Korea said it would cut emissions by 30 percent from “business as usual” by 2020. Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, said his country would try to reduce emissions by 25 percent by then, instead of 15 percent as announced earlier. Last week, Brazil promised reductions of about 40 percent below current projections by 2020.

The recent announcements are a mix of aspirations, good intentions and negotiating tactics. In most cases there is no certainty that the targets are politically or scientifically plausible. Still, they are a rough harbinger of the potential shape of future agreements and conflicts.

United Nations officials have said they hope that the richest industrialized nations will promise to reduce their emissions to meet negotiated individual targets. For developing nations, the hope is that they will commit to reducing their future emissions to levels below those that would accrue if they took no action. The poorest nations would get money and technological assistance to adapt to the consequences of climate change. UGG BOOTS

Many nations have based their new offers on that model. While some of the pledges are conditioned on reaching a binding international agreement, some countries, like South Korea, have said they will act whether the world did or did not.

South Korea, whose emissions nearly doubled from 1990 to 2005, said it would cut emissions by investing in energy-efficient buildings and transportation, developing new green industries and changing patterns of consumption.

“Our industry is really energy-intensive, so this is very ambitious,” Sang-Hyup Kim, South Korea’s secretary to the president for national future and vision, said in a phone interview from Seoul. He noted that the president and cabinet ministers had made the pledge in a building with the thermostat set low, and while wearing thermal underwear.

Last week, Brazil said it would offer to reduce its emissions by 38 to 42 percent from current projections for 2020. About half of that reduction would result from slowing deforestation in the Amazon. Forests are a crucial force in absorbing carbon dioxide.

The government described its action as a “political gesture” to show its good faith.

But it is in many ways easier for developing countries and so-called industrializing countries, like South Korea and Brazil, to put forth offers because they are under far less pressure to commit themselves formally under an agreement.

The industrialized countries — counted as those that were already industrialized when the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed in 1992 — have the more concrete task of committing to specific reductions.

Despite the steady stream of new pledges, representatives of many of the world’s poorest countries have expressed frustration over a recent decision by world leaders to defer a binding agreement until next year. Ed Hardy chothes

“This is a major setback — we should not pretend otherwise,” Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, Sudan’s United Nations representative, said Thursday, speaking for a coalition of developing nations.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Tainted by a flawed election and allegations of high-level corruption in his regime, President Hamid Karzai was inaugurated Thursday for a second term, saying the Afghan Army should assume full control of the country’s security within five years. Ed Hardy chothing

“We will decrease the role of international forces,” Mr. Karzai said at a midday ceremony held at the presidential palace in Kabul. “We want our security within five years to be entirely within the hands of the Afghan government and led by Afghans.”

The ceremony was the culmination of a fraught and chaotic electoral process that began on Aug. 20 when Afghans went to the polls. Mr. Karzai was proclaimed the winner earlier this month when his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister, withdrew from a run-off after a United Nations-sponsored inquiry found evidence of widespread electoral fraud.

His inauguration at this pivotal moment — eight years into the Afghan war as the United States is weighing a new battle strategy — raises the question of what Afghans and American officials can expect of him over the next five years amid doubts about whether he can complete his term.

Mr. Karzai faces calls from ordinary Afghans, Western donors, and the United States to root out corruption by overhauling his government. In his inaugural address Thursday, Mr. Karzai said corruption was “very dangerous issue,” news reports said, and he promised that a broad national conference, known as a loya jirga, would be held soon in Kabul to address the issue.

He also promised to prosecute people involved in the country’s huge, illicit narcotics industry which helps fuel both corruption and the Taliban insurgency claiming an increasingly high death toll among foreign troops. .

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton attended the ceremony with around 800 Afghan and foreign dignitaries including President Asif Ali Zardari of neighboring Pakistan and the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, whose country has 9,000 soldiers deployed in the 43-nation NATO coalition here. Mr. Karzai said his administration would “negotiate with our friends like the United States who doubt us, security-wise.”

The Obama administration is weighing a decision on the deployment of further American troops in Afghanistan in addition to the 68,000 already there as doubts spread in many parts of the NATO alliance about the value and risks of supporting a regime seen as lacking political credibility.

Mr. Karzai hailed the presence of the Pakistani leader as a sign of “good relationship, good brotherhood,” despite a history of tensions between the two countries across a porous and mountainous border stretching over 1,500 miles.

The Pakistan Army is currently conducting a drive against militants in its lawless border region of South Waziristan. Kabul has accused its neighbor of giving sanctuary to the leadership of the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. At the same time, Pakistan and its long-time rival India are jockeying for influence in Afghanistan.

Mr. Karzai stressed the desire to eliminate civilian casualties and vowed to end the use of civilian security contractors — two particularly sensitive topics among many Afghan civilians.

Mr. Karzai thanked the international election commission that oversaw the vote, which he called “a historic moment, and great steps toward democracy and people’s power,” pledging that future elections would be “entirely Afghanized.”

“We fight over our problems and we argue with each other,” he said, “but when it comes to our Afghan pride, we all pull together.”

“Eight years ago Afghanistan did not have any laws or regulations,” he said. “We had no government, no state.

“Putting an end to the fighting is the main need of our people now.”

But some Afghans question his ability to deliver on such promises.

Basher Dost, a candidate who came in third in the first round of the presidential election, has said Mr. Karzai’s lifelong orientation is toward his tribe and family, and those loyalties render him unable to make the deep changes needed in his government.

“He believes his power is his warlords, it’s the chiefs of tribes,” he said recently. “It’s not important what is true; what is important is the interest of your family. It’s why he cannot fight the warlords and cannot fight the corruption,” Mr. Dost said.

Immediately after the inauguration, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the secretary-general of NATO, sent a message of congratulation coupled with a demand for accountable government and measures to halt corruption.

“President Hamid Karzai has our best wishes for his second five-year term,” the message said, according to the NATO Web site. “We strongly support his intention to form a capable and inclusive administration, and to make it accountable, one in which corruption has no place.

“ It is critically important that the Afghan people, and the citizens of the countries sending troops to the international mission, see concrete progress in this regard,” the message said.

In his speech, Mr. Karzai sought to depict himself as an inclusive leader and invited the losing candidates to “come and help in serving this nation,” The Associated Press reported.

“ I am the servant of all the people of Afghanistan, from every ethnicity, every tribe, from every place, from every province — from every age, whether they are small children, whether they are old people, women — I invite all the presidential candidates to come and help in serving this nation,” he said.

But his address drew a dismissive response from the Taliban insurgents fighting to overthrow his government and expel its foreign backers.

“Today is not a historic day. This is a government based on nothing because of the continuing presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan,” a Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, told The A.P. Ed Hardy chothes

“Karzai’s call to the Taliban to come to the government has no meaning. He became president through fraud and lies,” the spokesman said.