Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is touring the war-battered West Bank city of Ramallah like a triumphant hero, hours after Israeli troops withdrew from his compound and released him from months of confinement.
 
 

AP
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat flashes the victory sign as he tours the town after leaving his compound Thursday

 Mr. Arafat visited a local hospital and said prayers at a graveyard where Palestinians killed during the uprising against Israeli occupation are buried. He also toured Palestinian Authority buildings in Ramallah, which were severely damaged during the Israeli incursion into the city.

 In interviews with television networks, Mr. Arafat said he is horrified by the damage caused during the Israeli offensive, and he denounced the "barbaric activities" of the Israeli army.

 Israel had restricted Mr. Arafat's movements for the past five months. He was further confined to a few rooms in his headquarters in late March, when the Israeli army invaded West Bank towns and cities after Palestinian suicide attacks that killed dozens of Israelis.

 Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says Mr. Arafat is now free to travel abroad. But Mr. Sharon says Israel might not allow the Palestinian leader to return if a terrorist attack takes place while he is away.

 Mr. Arafat regained his freedom under a U.S.-brokered deal that transferred six Palestinians wanted by Israel from the Arafat compound to Jericho, where they are imprisoned under British and American supervision.

 Meanwhile, Israeli troops and tanks entered the West Bank town of Tulkarem early Thursday. The army says it arrested five people suspected of planning attacks against Israelis. Palestinian witnesses say soldiers took over nearly one-third of the town. 

Some information for this report provided by AP and AFP. 

A member of the Palestinian security force has been killed by Israeli sniper fire during a gunbattle at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Palestinian witnesses say at least two other Palestinians inside the Israeli -besieged church compound were wounded during the latest shooting Thursday. 

Hours earlier, a blaze erupted inside the compound during an intense firefight. The Palestinians say an Israeli flare caused the fire. Israeli officials accuse the gunmen inside the church of arson. The Israeli army also says the Palestinians have booby-trapped the doors to the compound. 

Meanwhile, a Vatican envoy, French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, met with Israeli President Moshe Katsav in Jerusalem to call for an end to the stand-off at the church - one of Christianity's holiest sites. Cardinal Etchegaray says he also plans to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. 

About 200 people, including Palestinian gunmen - have been holed-up in the Church of the Nativity since April 2. 

An angry Mr. Arafat Wednesday, appealed to the international community to condemn the violence at the church. He called the fire inside the compound "an ugly crime." 

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

A divided U.N. Security Council is considering its next step after the decision by Secretary-General Kofi Annan to cancel a mission to investigate Israeli army actions in the Jenin Palestinian refugee camp. Council members plan more talks after what was described as "a very long and arduous" session late into the night Wednesday. 

Diplomats say Arab countries want a new resolution that would authorize the council to take "measures" against Israel for refusing to cooperate with the U.N. mission. 

Secretary-General Annan told the council he will disband the 20-member team, now waiting in Geneva, because of Israel's refusal to cooperate. Israel raised objections to the composition, mandate and scope of the fact-finding mission. 

The United States says it regrets the collapse of the mission, which it helped create, but supports Mr. Annan's decision to disband the fact-finding team. Palestinians say Israeli forces carried out a massacre of civilians during fighting in the Jenin camp early last month. Israel insists there were no atrocities, but a fierce battle between its army and Palestinian terrorists. 

In his letter to the Security Council, Secretary-General Annan said he regrets aborting the fact-finding mission, because "the long shadow cast by recent events in the Jenin refugee camp will remain." He said conditions in the Jenin camp are changing day by day, making it more and more difficult to establish with any certainty what happened there. 

Some information for this report provided by AP and Reuters. 

Gunmen believed to be Islamic militants have killed 31 people in two massacres in western Algeria. 

Officials say the killings took place overnight in the Tiaret region, about 230 kilometers southwest of the capital, Algiers. Algerian officials say 20 people were killed and five wounded in one attack in Ksar Chellala, and that 11 people were killed in the second assault in the Sidi Khaled district of Tiaret city. 

There was another mass killing in Tiaret last week - 16 civilians, including eight children, died during an attack on nomadic families April 24. 

No one has claimed responsibility for the assaults. But the Armed Islamic Group, a radical movement fighting the Algerian government, is active in the region. 

At least 120,000 people have died in Algeria's civil war since 1992. 

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

A senior British military officer in Afghanistan says 1,000 coalition troops have begun a new operation against al-Qaida and Taleban fighters in a mountainous region southeast of Kabul. 

Brigadier Roger Lane told reporters at Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, that the operation is aimed at destroying al-Qaida caves and bunkers and killing or capturing enemy fighters. He said the troops and equipment with full range of combat power have been deployed for the operation in the soaring mountains south of the town of Khost. He said coalition ground forces have not searched the area before. 

An Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman said several hundred Afghan troops are also taking part in the operation - code named "Operation Snipe." 

U.S. Defense Department said U.S. and allied forces were being redeployed near Khost close to the Pakistani border - indicating that preparations are underway for a major push against remaining al-Qaida and Taleban fighters. 

Some information for this report provided by AP and Reuters.

India's ruling Hindu Nationalist coalition says it will back an opposition motion in the upper house of parliament that expresses anguish over deadly Hindu-Muslim rioting in Gujarat state. 

Thursday's concession is widely seen as a move to head off a new round of heated parliamentary debate over Gujarat rioting, which has claimed more than 900 lives - most of them Muslim - since late February. 

Early Wednesday the ruling BJP coalition defeated a censure motion in the lower house that sought to reprimand the government for failing to protect Gujarat's minority Muslim population. Analysts say the ruling coalition did not have enough votes in the upper house to defeat a similar motion. Wednesday's vote came after more than 16 hours of bruising debate that exposed cracks in the ruling coalition. Three parties in the BJP alliance abstained from voting, saying the government and its allies in Gujarat had failed to provide adequate security. 

All 28 members of one key coalition partner, the Telugu Desam Party, walked out of the lower house before Wednesday's vote. The walkout came after Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee refused to remove Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi - a close political ally. Mr. Modi had been widely criticized for failing to protect Gujarat's Muslims. 

Some information for this report provided by AP and Reuters.

AP
Hu-Jintao file photo

 Vice President Hu is flying home after a two-day visit to the U.S. capital, during which he met with President Bush and other top officials. In a Wednesday night speech to a group that promotes U.S.-China relations, the Chinese vice president called Taiwan the most sensitive issue in dealings between Washington and Beijing. He said arms sales to the island are not consistent with U.S. commitments to the Chinese mainland.

 In Taipei Thursday, President Chen Shui-bian rejected Mr. Hu's warning, saying continued U.S. arms sales are meant to ensure peace and not to encourage an arms race between Taiwan and China. President Chen also said he does not expect a breakthrough in political ties with Beijing anytime soon.

 Washington has no diplomatic relations with Taiwan, but U.S. law requires the administration to provide the island with the means to defend itself. After his meeting with Mr. Hu, President Bush said he is pleased with the state of U.S.-China relations, and that he believes disagreements can be addressed productively.

 Mr. Hu returns to China after a six-day visit to the United States. The Chinese vice president is expected to become head of the country's ruling communist party later this year and to replace President Jiang Zemin as head of state early next year.
 
 

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

Two more indicted Yugoslav war crimes suspects have surrendered to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in the Hague. 

Former Deputy Prime Minister Nikola Sainovic and former Bosnian Serb prison camp commander Momcilo Gruban flew from Belgrade to the Netherlands Thursday and were taken to the tribunal's detention center. 

The U.N. tribunal has charged Mr. Sainovic with crimes against humanity for his alleged role in a crackdown by government forces against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. He was former President Slobodan Milosevic's security advisor in charge of Kosovo during NATO's 1999 bombing campaign in Yugoslavia. 

Mr. Milosevic is currently on trial before the Hague tribunal. Mr. Gruban was a warden in the Serb-run Omarska prison camp for Bosnian Muslims during war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He is charged with murder, sexual assault and torture of inmates. 

Mr. Sainovic and Mr. Gruban are among 23 indicted war crimes suspects ordered by the Yugoslav government last month to turn themselves in or face arrest. 

Some information for this report provided by AFP and Reuters.

French presidential candidates are to deliver final campaign speeches Thursday ahead of Sunday's runoff election. 

President Jacques Chirac will address supporters near Paris while far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen delivers his last speech of the campaign at a rally in Marseille. 

The 73-year-old Mr. Le Pen has campaigned on a law-and-order, anti-immigrant and anti-European Union platform. He scored a major upset by qualifying for the runoff, ahead of incumbent Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. 

President Chirac says the election is about defending the values of the French republic and has called on left-wing voters to back him in the runoff. Most French political parties and labor unions have endorsed Mr. Chirac. Wednesday, more than a million people demonstrated in cities across France in May Day protests against Mr. Le Pen's candidacy. The same day about 10,000 supporters of Mr. Le Pen, waving French flags, marched through Paris to a square in front of the city's opera.

A leading international relief organization has released a new report, saying modern-day wars around the world increasingly put mothers and their children at risk of death or losing their homes. 

In its report "State of the World's Mothers," Save the Children says wars once fought across defined battle-lines are now fought in city streets and neighborhoods. The report also says combatants are more frequently using rape and tactics such as denying food to civilians as weapons. 

The report ranks 105 countries on the condition and well-being of mothers. Switzerland tops the list as the best place for women, while war-torn countries such as Ethiopia, Yemen, Gambia and Nepal are among the worst with Niger in last place. The United States was tied with Austria for 10th place. 

At the bottom of a separate children's list was Afghanistan where one out of every six children dies before the age of one. 

The Save the Children report calls for a higher priority to be given to providing more care and protection for women and children in war ravaged areas, including health care, food, education and economic opportunities. 

Some information for this report provided by AP and Reuters.

Related News Bulletins

Kofi Annan

Mr. Annan says he has made every effort to accommodate Israel's concerns about the fact-finding mission. But he says Israel's continuing objections have made it clear that the mission would not be able to start any time soon.

 In a letter to the Security Council, The Secretary-General notes that time is a critical factor in the investigation. He says with the situation in Jenin changing by the day, it would be very difficult to establish the facts of the Israeli attack with any degree of certainty.
 
 

Kieran Prendergast

 The Secretary-General believes he has gone as far as he could in his negotiations with Israel. A U.N. spokesman said the list of objections kept getting longer, and finally, Mr. Annan had to say "enough."

 The Security Council authorized the mission April 19. Israel agreed initially, then backed away from it.

 The United States had hoped to keep the Jenin mission alive at least while some progress was being made diplomatically in the Palestinian-Israeli crisis. Secretary-General Annan travels to Washington Thursday to meet with U.S., Russian and European officials to discuss Middle East peace efforts.

A member of the Palestinian security force has been killed by Israeli sniper fire during a gunbattle at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Palestinian witnesses say at least two other Palestinians inside the Israeli -besieged church compound were wounded during the latest shooting Thursday. 

Hours earlier, a blaze erupted inside the compound during an intense firefight. The Palestinians say an Israeli flare caused the fire. Israeli officials accuse the gunmen inside the church of arson. The Israeli army also says the Palestinians have booby-trapped the doors to the compound. 

Meanwhile, a Vatican envoy, French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, met with Israeli President Moshe Katsav in Jerusalem to call for an end to the stand-off at the church - one of Christianity's holiest sites. Cardinal Etchegaray says he also plans to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. 

About 200 people, including Palestinian gunmen - have been holed-up in the Church of the Nativity since April 2. 

An angry Mr. Arafat Wednesday, appealed to the international community to condemn the violence at the church. He called the fire inside the compound "an ugly crime." 

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

Political analysts in Egypt say that with the United States and Europe more fully engaged in a Middle East peace process, Arab leaders will eventually have little choice but to begin the process of social and economic reform. 

It has become quite rare to hear speeches by Arab leaders in which the topic is something other than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In fact, many political analysts here publicly acknowledge some Arab governments have remained in power by directing the public's emotions toward the Mideast conflict as a way of diverting attention away from growing domestic problems. 

However, even during the most violent pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Egypt, many protesters expressed deep anger about such issues as unemployment, education, transportation and health care for the elderly. 

In Egypt, for example, while the government has traditionally said the unemployment rate is around 11 percent, many economists say it could really be 20 percent or even higher. 

Mohammad Kamal teaches political science at Cairo University. He said there is a growing awareness among Arab governments that domestic issues will have to be addressed "now that the United States and Europe are fully engaged in the Middle East peace process."

 "I think it will have a positive impact on Arab domestic politics in general because many Arab regimes delayed political reform in the name of the Arab-Israeli conflict, in the name of fighting Israel. So once the conflict is over, people will start asking questions about democracy and economic reform, and so on. And the government, the ruling elite, will have to answer these questions: democracy, unemployment, economic reform in general, and the government will have to respond to these challenges and will not be able to postpone them in the name of conflict," he said. In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak's nationally televised Labor Day speech Tuesday touched on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But the Egyptian leader spent most of his time discussing the need for social and economic reform. 

Hosni Mubarak (file photo)

 Abdullah el Ashaal is an expert on Arab affairs who lectures at several universities in Cairo. He said Arab governments will have a chance to address many pressing social and economic issues once public anger over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is calmed.

 "The promotion of democracy, the promotion of education, to look into the economic situation, and to take care of the youth and to upgrade the situation of women and the weak and fragile elements in the society, and also to get to the new civilization because the Arab world is too much far away from joining the train of progress in the whole world. So if you pacify the front of the Arab-Israeli conflict I think this would give us a chance to take care of our problems," he said. 

Mr. el Ashaal said he is sure there will be some Arab governments that will resist reform by continuing to focus public attention toward the Mideast conflict. However, he said these are the governments "that will run the greatest risk of eventually being toppled by the masses." 

The White House says it wants Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations to help push the Mideast peace process forward. But officials deny there is a new strategy in place that calls for the Americans to put pressure on Israel, while the Saudis use their influence with the Palestinians. 

Published reports say the United States and Saudi Arabia struck an informal deal during Crown Prince Abdullah's trip last week to the Bush ranch in Texas.

 These reports say they agreed on joint action to bring an end to the Palestinian-Israel conflict, with Washington focusing on the Israelis, and the Saudis pushing the Palestinians.
 
 

Ari Fleischer

 "It has always been the president's view that the way to bring peace to the Middle East was to work with the Israelis, the Palestinian Authority and the Arab nations to find ways for all the parties to work together," the spokesman said. "And that involves multiple conversations on multiple levels."

 Mr. Fleischer said it is over-simplistic to say one group of nations is going to target one group. He said there has not been "a division of labor."

 The White House spokesman was asked if Saudi Arabia is now playing a special role in the peace process. He said that is for the Saudis to determine. But he left no doubt President Bush is pleased with the results of his meeting with Crown Prince Abdullah.

 "The president and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia have established a very good relationship and Saudi Arabia is playing a constructive role in helping others to help themselves, so peace can be brought to the Middle East," he said. 

On other matters related to the Middle East, Mr. Fleischer said the United States believes a U.N. fact finding mission should go to the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.

 "The United States does support fact finding in Jenin," he said. "The United States worked with the United Nations to try to bring about an agreement between Israel and the United Nations so the fact finders can go into Jenin and make a determination."

 Palestinians claim war crimes were committed in Jenin by Israeli forces. Israel denies this and expresses concern a U.N. fact-finding mission will not be objective. 

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is expected to discuss these and other issues next week in Washington with President Bush. The president is also scheduled to meet Wednesday with Jordan's King Abdullah.

A human rights group has issued a preliminary report suggesting that not only the Taleban, but their opponents may have been involved in mass killings in northern Afghanistan. 

 The group, which has also examined mass graves in the Balkans, made two visits early this year to examine mass graves in the vicinity of Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan. Most of the sites are thought to contain victims of the Taleban because they date back four or five years. But two sites, Physicians for Human Rights said, are much more recent.
 
 

Dr. Jennifer Leaning

Dr. Leaning described what they found at one site in the Dasht-I-Laili desert outside Shebarghan. "We saw bits of human bone and skulls and femurs, prayer caps, trousers, sandals, prayer beads, littering on the surface," she said. And if one kicked just gently below the sand, there were other bones. And one got the sense that it was a multi-layered, quite large, quite recent gravesite."

 Dr. Leaning says the grave, which contains an unknown number of human remains, was not more than one month old when she visited it in January. A subsequent visit by a forensic team from the Physicians for Human Rights confirmed that view.

 Based on preliminary examinations of several sites and interviews with local inhabitants, the group says these two sites may have been used to dispose of the bodies of Taleban prisoners killed by victorious Northern Alliance troops.

 Reports of Taleban atrocities have circulated in the region for years. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people are believed to have been killed by the Taleban when they took Mazar-e-Sharif in 1998. But this is the first evidence that the Northern Alliance may have engaged in like-minded reprisals when they retook the area last year.

 Dr. Leaning said local inhabitants told of what they saw. "We heard different stories," she said, "two big container trucks, six big container trucks, three big container trucks, but these were also on different days. So each of these stories could be true, that there were big container trucks with soldiers offloading from them bodies, and big earthmoving equipment digging trenches into which the soldiers were throwing the bodies, and that the soldiers were wearing bandannas over their mouth and nose to protect against the smell. And this we heard from different independent eyewitnesses on several different occasions."
 
 

Abdul Rashid Dostum

 Dr. Leaning said there are many still-unexamined mass graves in northern Afghanistan. As she points out, much killing along ethnic, tribal, or political lines has occurred. She said, "There are different people who are alleged to be the perpetrators, depending upon what year you're talking to and what warring clan you're talking to. That's part of why it's so complicated. There are layers of atrocities, and no one has clean hands in Afghanistan."
 
 

Leonard Rubenstein

 Chief Election Commissioner Irshad Hassan Khan says the turnout for Tuesday's referendum was over 70 percent, a new record for voter participation in Pakistan.

 Pakistan's independent human rights commission says there were widespread irregularities in the polling including many cases of people voting on multiple occasions. Pakistan's opposition political parties say turnout was far lower than the government claims.

 Pakistan's information minister Nisar Memon admits irregularities, but says they were minor and did not affect the outcome.

 "Insofar as the results are concerned I think they would not be impacted by any kind of a situation," he said. "These were not of a massive kind of thing that may have happened. Individuals may have acted and if they did they should be brought to book charges. Because nobody is above the law."
 
 

AP
Pervez Musharraf,his mother and wife voting

 Rasul Baksh Rais, who heads the Area Studies Center at Islamabad's Quaidi-I-Azam University, says General Musharraf's referendum has had an unintended side-effect. He says Pakistan's opposition parties, dormant since General Musharraf seized power in 1999, have resurfaced during the referendum campaign, opening the door to a resumption of political activity in the country.

 "They are free to make speeches, they are free to communicate with the people," he said. "And I think they can use the next six months, or four or five months, leading to the general elections to keep that level of political mobilization."

 Although opposition Pakistani political figures have criticized the referendum as unconstitutional, saying it amounts to a military takeover of the government through the ballot box, there has been little international criticism.

 Commonwealth officials, who suspended Pakistan from the organization following General Musharraf's coup in 1999, say they are monitoring developments. U.S. officials, who say President Musharraf has been indispensable in helping the fight against terrorism, have also refrained from any criticism that could hurt their close ally. 

Bulldozers and men with pickaxes tear down block after block of old houses in the industrial city of Anyang, in China's central Henan province. Red painted characters for "demolish" cover the gray brick walls. Migrant workers clamber through the rubble, looking for items to be recycled. This is what the local government calls preservation of its cultural heritage. 

More than 3,000 years ago, kings from the ancient Shang dynasty built their capital at Yin, which has now become Anyang city. Oracle bones discovered on this site provide the earliest records of Chinese writing. Archaeologists here have excavated some of the finest relics from China's Bronze Age. 

But the government says the houses built around these ancient ruins have become an eyesore and must be torn down. Anyang is in a no-holds-barred race to become the next city in China chosen by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. 

Anyang's vice mayor Xiao Jiye says that in the past, the local government didn't have enough money to fund projects to preserve its cultural heritage. He says Anyang has been dogged by unemployment and poverty, and is struggling to keep up with the rapid economic growth in China's coastal regions. Anyang residents make an average of less than $700 a year, well below urban incomes elsewhere in the country. It is now succumbing to bulldozers.

 Mr. Xiao says the government is spending $24 million to demolish what it considers inappropriate buildings and renovate historical sites. 

The pressure on the vice mayor is telling when he suddenly bursts into tears before a room full of journalists.
 
 

Struggling to control his sobbing, Mr. Xiao vows to achieve victory for his city. He says if Anyang fails in this campaign, he won't be able to face his superiors or the people he governs. 

Anyang is not alone in this race. At least four other Chinese cities this year are vying for the prestige and economic returns that come with the UNESCO brand name. China already has 27 UNESCO-approved heritage sites, behind only Italy and Spain. Some of the more famous sites include the Great Wall and the Forbidden City in Beijing. 

The country has received millions of dollars from foreign governments and corporations to preserve its heritage sites. Once a city joins the coveted UNESCO list, revenue from tourism also shoots up.

 But China has already come under criticism for failing to maintain its existing sites. UNESCO officials rebuked the local government of Chengde, the mountainous imperial capital in Hebei province, for a building frenzy that they said ruined the townscape. UNESCO also threatened to revoke the world heritage status of Zhangjiajie, a forest reserve in Hunan province, because of excessive pollution. 

Mr. Xiao insists that his government is not seeking monetary gain from a UNESCO listing. He says the whole city is now prepared to make major sacrifices to ensure the preservation of its history. 

He says the government has asked Anyang residents to contribute money to the heritage campaign. So far, he says residents have pledged more than $2 million. Mr. Xiao adds that the government is soliciting donations only from the gainfully employed residents.

 Mr. Li, 67, is one of the thousands of inhabitants living in designated historical areas, who must move away to make room for the government's world heritage project. Mr. Li, who reveals his last name only, watches as bulldozers rip apart the buildings on both sides of his six-member household. 

Mr. Li says he contributed $84 to the government's bid to win world heritage status. That's 1.5 times the average monthly salary in Anyang - a hefty sum even for someone with full-time employment. But Mr. Li says no one in his household has a job. Asked how he can afford to contribute so much money, Mr. Li smiles awkwardly, then brushes aside the question. It's good for the country, he says. 

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