The Pentagon says about a dozen U.S. military personnel have arrived in Nepal to assess the country's military needs as it struggles to fight Maoist rebels. 

The military personnel arrived Wednesday following a U.S. State Department request for Congress to approve 20-million dollars in emergency aid for Nepal to help it combat the six-year insurgency. 

Also Wednesday, the anti-monarchy rebels torched the vacant country home of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba in western Nepal. A nationwide strike called by the rebels enters its third day Thursday. 

Streets in Kathmandu are mostly deserted. Residents say there is no support for the rebel movement in the city. But they are quoted as saying they are too afraid of rebel reprisals to venture outside their homes. 

The Maoists launched their rebellion in 1996, seeking to overthrow Nepal's constitutional monarchy and replace it with communist rule. More than three thousand people have died in attacks. About one third of the deaths have occurred since last November, when rebels broke a four-month ceasefire. 

Uruguay has ordered the expulsion of Cuba's ambassador after breaking ties with the communist island over a human rights dispute. 

The Uruguayan foreign ministry made the announcement Wednesday, after declaring Cuban Ambassador Jose Alvarez "persona non grata." Uruguay has already recalled its ambassador from Cuba. 

On Tuesday, Uruguayan President Jorge Batlle said diplomatic ties would be severed because of what he called "insults" by Cuban President Fidel Castro. 

The Cuban leader accused Uruguay of being servile to the United States by sponsoring a U.N. resolution that urges Cuba to improve its human rights record. President Castro also has described President Batlle as a "Judas," referring to the biblical character that betrayed Jesus Christ. 

Mr. Batlle says the remarks were not directed against him, but against the nation of Uruguay. He says President Castro's remarks left him with no choice but to severe diplomatic ties. 

Uruguayan officials, however, say commercial and cultural relations with Cuba will be maintained. This is not the first time the two countries have severed ties. In 1964, diplomatic ties were broken at the height of the Cold War. They were re-established in the mid-1980s. 

Some information for this report provided by Reuters and AFP.

Several U.S. lawmakers are criticizing a new report that alleges the Irish Republican Army is part of an international terrorist network that trained leftist rebels in southern Colombia. 

Lawmakers attending a congressional hearing in Washington Wednesday said the report is misleading. They also said linking the IRA to Colombian rebels could undermine the Northern Ireland peace process. 

The House International Relations Committee compiled the report after three suspected IRA members were arrested in Bogota last August and charged with training rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. The report quotes Colombian authorities as saying up to 15 IRA members, including weapons experts, have visited southern Colombia since 1998 to train rebels. 

The report says that since then, the rebels known as the FARC have been using more sophisticated car bombs and mortars in their attacks. Gerry Adams, head of the IRA's political wing, Sinn Fein, denies IRA involvement in Colombia. He also refused to testify at Wednesday's congressional hearing, citing the interests of Northern Ireland's peace process. 

House investigators also say terrorists from Cuba, Iran and possibly the Basque separatist group, ETA have trained with the FARC. 

For the past 38 years, Colombia has been involved in a 38-year civil war involving the FARC, a smaller rebel force known as the National Liberation Army or ELN, and right-wing paramilitaries. 

The conflict has left at least 40,000 people dead in the past decade alone. 

Some information for this report provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.

A published report by a think-tank group says Liberia's internal civil war threatens to spread to neighboring countries of Sierra Leone and Guinea and calls on the international community to intervene. 

The report released Wednesday by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) says Liberia's internal situation is key to ending regional instability. 

The group accused Liberian President Charles Taylor of using proxy militia fighters in neighboring countries. It also said such action would put the hard-won peace in Sierra Leone in jeopardy. 

Sierra Leone's 10-year civil war, started by rebels backed by Liberia, ended in January after the United Nation's largest peacekeeping force disarmed more than 47,000 rebels and pro-government militiamen. 

The ICG report praises the international community for intervening in Sierra Leone to end the war there. But it also says the world community cannot be certain that the peace in Sierra Leone will survive until the war in Liberia also ends. 

Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone have accused one another of supporting rebels threatening the three countries. 

Some information for this report provided by Reuters.

AP
Palestinians transport body of boy found in rubble

In a huge pile of ruins, a man leaning on a cane tells Israeli reporter Amira Haas, "This is my home, and my son is inside." His son is dead, crushed by an Israeli bulldozer because he could not escape in his wheelchair. The family had shouted to the Israelis to stop, in vain. 

The Los Angeles Times reports that Mohammed Abu Siba was shot by an Israeli sniper on his veranda. After the family wrapped his body in a rug, an Israeli bulldozer started demolishing the house. They fled, and when they returned, said a son, "We were able to get half of my father. The other half is still in there." 

The Israeli incursion of the Jenin Palestinian refugee camp has aroused protest from Palestinians, media and human rights observers. Many say they have never seen anything like it.

Terje Roed-Larsen, U.N. representative in the region, called it a horrifying scene of human suffering. "The government of Israel has lost all moral ground in this conflict," he said. 

The Israeli government accused Mr. Larsen of anti-Semitic tendencies, but he wasn't alone in his reaction. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State William Burns said what happened in Jenin has caused enormous suffering for thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians.

 The Economist magazine called it a "scene of devastation that has had no equal throughout Israel's 34-year conquest and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza."

 Peter Bouckaert, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch spent four days in Jenin after the Israeli withdrawal. "The destruction is on a massive scale. Certainly a significant number of civilians were killed during this operation, including several children, quite a few women and a few elderly people," he said. "We documented the cases of several people who were killed trying to help wounded civilians, including one nurse. We also documented the cases of several people who were crushed in their homes when Israelis went in with bulldozers and just flattened a significant part of the refugee camp." 

Mr. Bouckaert says the killing of so many civilians could have been avoided. Some died because the Israelis did not allow medical help to reach them for several days.

 "Even after the combat ended, for almost a week, Israel continued to deny any humanitarian access to the camp," he said. "Many people had been displaced from their homes. There was no water or electricity in the camp. Those actions by the Israeli forces in the aftermath of the combat situation certainly contributed to the severe suffering that was faced by the civilians in the camp."

 There is another side to this story, said former CNN correspondent Linda Scherzer, in a speech to the annual convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington. The grim television images, she said, give a distorted picture of what occurred. 

"There was fierce resistance. There were laboratories of destruction in Jenin. It was a breeding ground for terrorism," she said. "Suicide bombers were sent directly into Israel from that camp. Much of the devastation was caused by the booby-trapped buildings. But unfortunately, those pictures are so powerful and create such an impression that I often feel that the world forms its opinions by what it sees, not necessarily by what it hears."

 Linda Scherzer said television does not cover the plotting of the Palestinian terrorists. So they escape media scrutiny.
 
 

Ariel Sharon

 "We discovered illegal weapons, bomb factories and arrested many wanted terrorists. We dismantled the infrastructure of suicide bombers, thereby saving the lives of many Israelis," he said. "Operation Defensive Shield has opened a window of opportunity to put the peace back on a different, more realistic track."

 The surviving Palestinians of Jenin do not talk of peace with Israel. One man points to an eight-year-old boy with hurt in his eyes. "He saw all this evil. He will remember it all."

Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States has turned up no evidence thus far of an Israeli massacre of civilians at the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin. He told U.S. senators Wednesday that he thinks it would be in Israel's best interest to allow a U.N. fact-finding probe of events in the West Bank town to go forward. 

Mr. Powell said Israeli bulldozers caused a great deal of destruction in the Jenin camp and innocent lives may well have been lost in the heavy fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants.
 
 

Colin Powell

Appearing before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee, Mr. Powell said Assistant Secretary of State William Burns spent more than three hours in the battle-scarred camp last Friday and saw no evidence of a mass grave or large numbers of civilian deaths.

 "He said there was quite a level of destruction that had occurred within the Jenin camp. And it seemed to be in the best interest of all concerned, especially the best interests of the Israelis, to let a fact-finding team come in an see what the facts are, as opposed to the kinds of coarse speculation that was out there as to what happened, with terms being tossed around like massacre or mass graves. None of which, so far seems to be the case," Mr. Powell said.

 Mr. Powell said he believes the fact-finding panel being assembled by the United Nations to look into the Jenin events will be objective. 

He noted that retired U.S. Army General William Nash had been elevated from an adviser to a full member of the inquiry team in response to Israeli concerns that it lacked military experts.

 He said he had spoken late Tuesday with both Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and that an Israeli delegation would meet Mr. Annan Thursday to discuss remaining Israeli concerns. 

At the subcommittee hearing, Mr. Powell drew praise from members of both parties for the Middle East mission he completed last week - which yielded an Israeli pledge to withdraw troops from areas of the West Bank it had reoccupied, and a condemnation by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat of suicide bombings. 

However, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, the panel chairman, sharply criticized the Bush administration for what he said was its belated intervention in a crisis that has spun out of control.

 "My personal opinion is that the administration blundered badly by staying away when our leadership was needed most. Now whether it was because the President was pre-occupied by the war on terrorism, or did not want to be identified with a policy that his predecessor was so deeply engaged in, or that they were concerned they may be drawn into a quagmire that can end in a failure, it was a big mistake," the senator said. "We're the only country that can play the role of intermediary in the Middle East. The situation has become so polarized, so steeped in bitterness and hated, that our task in infinitely harder." 

Mr. Powell contested the notion of an administration blunder and insisted it had been "deeply engaged" on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since President Bush first took office last year.

 He noted that President Bush in his U.N. address last year became the first U.S. President to explicitly call for creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, and he said the Tenet cease-fire plan and the Mitchell commission report were produced under administration sponsorship as a roadmap back to peace talks.

 He blamed the parties for the violence that sidetracked peace efforts, saying "the failure was theirs, not ours."

Sudanese government forces have launched a massive offensive in three southern provinces, displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians, according to Sudanese rebels. 

Southern Peoples Liberation Movement spokesman, Samson Kwaje, said that mechanised infantry columns supported by helicopter gunshops began attacking rebel-held villages in Bahr-el-Ghazal and Western and Eastern Upper Nile provinces on Saturday. 

He said heavy fighting is taking place along a road connecting the government held-town of Wau and rebel-held Gogrial, 1,000 kilometers southwest of the capital, Khartoum. 

"It is very serious. They came out of Wau town. They are heading towards Gogrial. They have also come out of Wau towards Tonje. As they were coming out of Wau, they were attacking villages, and they were burning villages," Mr. Kwaje said. 

He said hundreds of thousands of civilians have been driven out of their homes. He has said that this has "created a humanitarian catastrophe of the highest scale, reminiscent of the 1998 famine." 

The government of Sudan denies these allegations. 

Mohamed Dirdeiry, a senior official at the Sudanese embassy in Nairobi has charged, if the SPLA has any serious allegations it should first file them with concerned international bodies who can look into them. 

But aid agencies are backing up the rebels claims. 

Paul Savage of Christian Aid said an attack on Gogrial has long been anticipated. He said there has been a government of Sudan military build-up in the area earlier this month. 

"I was in Mapel which is southwest of Wau at the beginning of the month. There were stories on the ground that the GOS - they kind of test things out a little bit, before they actually do anything. There was a build up of horseman militia in Wau and they had been going up and down the road to a place called Acumcum which is on the way towards Gogrial. Just testing out the ground really. I think to see how strong the SPLA were in the area," Mr. Savage said. 

Observers believe the government of Sudan wants to recapture Gogrial before the end of the dry season. This would improve government supply lines and offer better protection for their oil fields which are under rebel attack. 

However, Mr Savage believes the SPLA's estimate of the number of civilians displaced by the offensive is inflated. 

AP
Vicente Fox, left, with Fidel Castro

In a more than three-hour appearance on Cuba's state-controlled television Tuesday, President Fidel Castro toned down his criticism of his Mexican counterpart. He said he thinks Mexican President Vicente Fox is a decent man who blundered partly from lack of experience and partly from bad advice.
 
 

Jorge Castaneda VOA Photo - G. Flakus

 The controversy began Monday when Mr. Castro played an 18-minute recording of a telephone conversation he had had with President Fox on the eve of the United Nations Poverty summit in Monterrey, Mexico last month. In it, President Fox prods the Cuban communist leader to keep his visit to the summit short and asks him not to do anything that would offend President Bush. Although there is nothing in the recording to back Mr. Castro's charge that he was pressured to leave Monterrey early, it did contradict Mr. Fox's assertion that he had done nothing to influence the Cuban leader on that issue.
 
 

Rosario Robles

 She says the president should explain to the Mexican people why he lied to them about the conversation with Mr. Castro.

 Meanwhile, the controversial foreign minister Mr. Castaneda denies that there ever was a lie. He says the tape makes clear that President Fox tried to dissuade Mr. Castro from prolonging his stay and complicating matters in Monterrey, but that no pressure was applied.

 Leaders of Mr. Fox's party the pro-business National Action Party, or PAN are also speaking out in his favor. The PAN governor of the state of Aguascalientes, Felipe Gonzalez, says the real issue here is that Mr. Castro recorded and then made public a private conversation with another head of state. Governor Gonzalez says no one should be surprised, however, since Fidel Castro has always been treacherous.

 He also addressed Mr. Castro's contention that President Fox blundered because he is inexperienced. Governor Gonzalez says he would not want a president with the more than 40 years of experience Mr. Castro has had in repressing political dissent and keeping his country in misery.

 Some independent political commentators have also stepped up to defend President Fox, at least in part, these past days. Political analyst Sergio Sarmiento, speaking on Mexico's TV Azteca, said this whole incident was really an attempt by Fidel Castro to stop Mexico from voting against Cuba at the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva last week.

 He said it is clear to him that Mr. Castro had threatened President Fox with release of the taped conversation in order to pressure the Mexican leader not to support the measure directed against Cuba in Geneva. Mr. Sarmiento said President Fox had done the brave thing and the right thing in voting in Geneva according to the criteria established by the Mexican government and not allowing himself to be blackmailed by the Cuban communist leader.

 The clash between President Fox and President Castro has done damage to both men, but analysts agree that Mr. Castro has the most to lose. Mexico is the Cuban leader's oldest friend in the hemisphere and the source of a good part of the oil Cuba uses. For Mexico, Cuba is of little importance, being the destination for only about one percent of Mexico's total annual exports.

 An opinion poll published in Mexico's Reforma newspaper on Wednesday revealed the political damage Mr. Fox has suffered. Asked if the president had lied when he said no one had asked Mr. Castro to leave the Monterrey summit early, 73 percent of respondents answered "yes." But 69 percent also said they believed Mr. Castro had betrayed President Fox by making the recording public. 

In regard to which country is more important to Mexico, the poll respondents left no doubt. Asked about the long conflict between the United States and Cuba, 64 percent of Mexicans favored the United States and only 12 percent said Mexican policy should favor Cuba. 

Leaders of the U.S. Roman Catholic Church said they regretted having failed to do enough to prevent the sex abuse scandals. Their words came in a letter addressed to priests in the U.S. made public at the end of a two-day meeting in the Vatican. 

American cardinals released a letter addressed to priests in the United States after a long final session of their two-day meeting in the Vatican with Pope John Paul and top Roman Catholic Church officials. 

They said they regretted that "episcopal oversight" had not been able to preserve the church from the sex abuse scandals. "The entire church," the cardinals said, "is afflicted by this wound the victims and their families first, but also you who have dedicated your lives to the priestly service of the gospel of God." 

The letter was an expression of support for priests in the U.S. "We know the heavy burden of sorrow and shame that you are bearing," the cardinals said, praising those who had not betrayed their mission. 

The cardinals also issued a statement declaring that they had reached agreement on making it easier to remove priests who are guilty of sexually abusing minors. 

At a news conference, the head of the U.S. bishops conference Wilton Gregory said there is growing consensus among the faithful and bishops that it is too great a risk to reassign a priest who has abused a child to another ministry. 

The U.S. cardinals also said that they would recommend a special process to defrock and expel any priest who has become "notorious and is guilty of the serial, predatory sexual abuse of minors." That is expected to be presented at a meeting of U.S. bishops in Dallas in June. 

U.S. cardinals reaffirmed the issue of the celibacy of the Roman Catholic Church. They also declared that "a link between celibacy and pedophilia cannot be scientifically maintained". 

Pope John Paul called the unprecedented meeting of U.S. cardinals to discuss the growing crisis caused by the sex abuse scandals in the U.S. and subsequent loss of confidence of the faithful. At the meeting the Pope clearly stated there would be zero tolerance for priests involved in sexual abuse of young people. 

Even Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld concedes the Pentagon has a serious language problem. "It is true that the United States government does not have as many Arabic speakers as we would wish," he said.

 But it is not just Arabic. Mr. Rumsfeld could just as easily have cited shortages of speakers of Pashto, Dari, Urdu and Uzbek - all critical to operations in and around Afghanistan. 

The defense secretary says help is on the way.

 "We are doing things about that and bringing people back in and borrowing people from other government entities and using reservists who are being called up who have that competence."

 But the government is not just counting on more skilled linguists. It is also exploring a high-technology solution to the language problem, and that is where the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has stepped in.

 DARPA is working on something called Babylon. It could be considered the Holy Grail of translating, an instantaneous, two-way, hand-held speech translating device that will let American soldiers speak and understand Arabic, Pashto, Dari and Urdu without any previous knowledge of those languages.

 DARPA officials concede that creating a truly effective two-way speech translator is proving difficult and complicated. 

But the agency has already sent experimental one-way, palm-sized translating devices to Afghanistan and says it is considering development of a Babylon module for use at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to assist in the interrogations of Taleban and al-Qaida detainees.

 DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker says the one-way devices now under testing in Afghanistan work this way: a pre-programmed phrase is selected, say an English phrase dealing with a security or medical matter. The device then broadcasts the recording of a native speaker of, say, Pashto repeating the phrase in that foreign language.

 The devices were delivered just 90 days after the start of U.S. operations in Afghanistan last October. Spokeswoman Walker says the agency is hoping to get useful feedback on how they work from those testing them in the field.

 Even when a fully operational Babylon two-way speech translating device becomes available, researchers say the initial programs will be limited to what they term 'military task domains.' They say open-domain or unconstrained dialogue translations suitable to any environment are still five to 10 years away.

 But the researchers are not just stopping there. DARPA has also disclosed it is pursuing another program called TIDES - Translingual Information Detection, Extraction and Summarization. The goal is to enable English speakers to locate and interpret critical information in foreign languages from raw audio or texts. The technology is designed to help discover specific information in the audio or text, extract the information and then convert it to English. 

DARPA says it is already testing two text and audio processing systems in experiments involving the subjects of bio-security and terrorism. It says work on Arabic language versions has been substantially accelerated in response to the terrorist attacks of last September on the United States. 

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