Afghanistan summary here.

Pakistan summary here and here and here.

Tracking the South Korean situation:

South Korea paid two million dollars to Taliban extremists in Afghanistan to secure the release of 19 hostages, a Japanese newspaper reported Friday.

Citing unidentified sources in Afghanistan, the respected Asahi Shimbun said Afghan mediators persuaded South Korea’s ambassador in Kabul that there was no other way to end the six-week kidnap ordeal.

“Two million dollars were paid to release all 19 people,” an Afghan mediator was quoted as telling the influential Japanese daily.

The Asahi Shimbun said both a South Korean official and a Taliban spokesman contacted by the newspaper denied any payment. Article

Cornered?

Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf has made his last move in the endgame he is playing with the country’s politicians — threatening to hand over the keys to another general before he quits.

The threat — conveyed to opposition politicians in London — is conditional. If politicians accept him as the head of a new government of national consensus for the next five years, he will work with them.

If not, he will quit and let them deal with another general.

[snip]

Over the weekend Musharraf sent a team to London for “a final meeting” with former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who has been negotiating a power-sharing deal with the general for some time.

The package his team brought from Islamabad includes an offer to convene an all-party conference for achieving “grand national reconciliation.”

For the sake of this grand reconciliation, Musharraf offered to quit the army before the presidential elections, due by October this year. But in the trade-off he wants all political parties to agree to elect him president for the next five years after parliamentary elections, due later this year.

Musharraf also wants to retain the powers he enjoys as a military ruler, which makes the prime minister subservient to him. In the British parliamentary system that Pakistan follows, the prime minister enjoys all executive powers while the president is only a figure head.

[snip]

Sources in Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party told United Press International that Musharraf’s team warned the politicians that if they fail to reach an agreement with him, he will quit and hand over power to another general.

The chief of Pakistan’s much-dreaded Inter Service Intelligence, Lt. Gen. Ashfaq Kiani, led Musharraf’s team in these talks, perhaps because he was considered the right person for telling politicians that if the talks failed, Pakistan will have yet another period of martial law.

But Musharraf’s threats are not having much of an impact these days.

[snip]

If both Bhutto and Sharif reject his proposal, Musharraf can then turn to the army, saying that since politicians are not interested in reaching a national consensus, he has no other option but to let the military deal with the situation.

It is, however, not clear if the military would back such a deal. Another hurdle that Musharraf may have to cross before bringing the troops is convincing the United States. Article