"UN experts in New York and in Vienna began studying Iraq’s voluminous weapons dossier yesterday to judge whether it is a full disclosure that might spare the country an attack by the United States. Washington stressed it would wait to see what was in the 12,000-page document flown from Baghdad on Sunday. But US officials say they have their own evidence of Iraqi nuclear, biological or chemical programmes. Even before the documents were delivered or seen, the White House insisted it had evidence, not given to UN weapons inspectors, that Iraq had retained or even accelerated its arms programmes in the four years since inspectors left Iraq. Amir al-Saadi said If they have anything to the contrary, let them come up with it, give it to the IAEA, give it to Unmovic. They are here in Baghdad, they could check it. Why play this game?," reported the Reuters news agency.
"Kenyan police yesterday published computer-generated images of two men suspected of involvement in twin attacks targeting Israelis near Mombasa last week, saying the men were of Arab appearance," reported the Reuters news agency..
"President George W. Bush yesterday named rail mogul John Snow as Treasury secretary, replacing Paul O’Neill who was forced to resign last week in the biggest shake-up of the two-year-old administration. The CSX chairman’s appointment, which must by approved by the Republican-controlled Congress, is part of a major reinvention of the Bush administration’s economic team. Bush is expected to later name former Goldman Sachs Chairman Stephen Friedman as senior White House economic adviser, taking over from Lawrence Lindsey, who was also forced out last week," reported the Reuters news agency.
"In a letter read at Catholic churches throughout California, priests challenged a new state law they believe will prompt a flood of sexual abuse lawsuits seeking millions of dollars. Starting Jan 1, the statute of limitations on the filing of molestation lawsuits will be lifted for one year. Catholic officials intend to contest the new law in court. Outside the cathedral, about 10 protesters representing sexual abuse victims said the bishops should support the new law, not challenge it," reported the AP news agency.
"In past election campaigns, South Korean presidential candidates boasted of close ties with Washington. But this year, the two main contenders in a Dec 19 presidential poll are distancing themselves from their country’s main ally amid rising anti-US sentiment. Both candidates are trying to capitalise on widespread outrage over the acquittal in US military courts of two US soldiers whose armoured vehicle hit and killed two South Korean girls in June," reported the AP news agency.
"Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat should not attend the midnight mass in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve because he is not a man of peace, a senior aide to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said yesterday. However, the aide, Raanan Gissin, stopped short of saying that Israel would ban Arafat from Bethlehem, as it did last year," reported the AP news agency.
"Stanford University has announced its intention to clone human embryos, becoming the first U.S. university to publicly embrace the politically charged procedure. The intent of the project is to produce stem cells for medical research. Scientists believe embryonic stem cells, which are created in the first days of pregnancy and develop into all the cells that comprise a human body, can be used to treat many illnesses. Embryos must be destroyed to harvest the stem cells, and some abortion opponents and others oppose the research," reported the AP news agency.
"A top US official has strongly backed Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s threat of pre-emptive strikes, describing it as a wake-up call to Asian nations to rid themselves of terrorism. Armitage, Washington’s second-ranked diplomat, said he appreciated and supported Howard’s declaration last week that he would order pre-emptive strikes overseas if there was no other way of saving Australia from terrorist attack," reported the AFP news service.
"The United States reminded South Koreans yesterday that they relied on Washington to defend them against Stalinist North Korea, as leaders in Seoul struggled to quell a new wave of anti-American protests," reported the AFP news service.
"Former US president Jimmy Carter used his Nobel Peace Prize speech in Oslo yesterday to take a swipe at US policy towards Iraq, warning that a so-called preventive war could have catastrophic results. Carter has been an outspoken critic of President George W. Bush, who has been readying US forces for an attack on Iraq, which Bush called part of an axis of evil which is developing weapons of mass destruction," reported the AFP news service.
"The United States seized Iraq's huge arms declaration and handed out copies to Britain and France, annoying other UN members as the daunting analytical task began in earnest yesterday. But other council members questioned how they could judge US charges that Iraq was lying about its banned weapons programmes if they were denied access to the full text of its currently accurate, full and complete declaration. And in the Arab worldthe US action on Sunday, was branded an act of piracy. UN secretary-general Kofi Annan defended the US action, even though he acknowledged he had learnt of it only after the event," reported the AFP news service.
"Australia allows its troops to beat asylum seekers and denies them legal rights, an international human rights watchdog said in a report released yesterday. In the 94-page study based on eight months of investigation, Human Rights Watch also said Canberra’s hardline policy on asylum seekers violates international obligations to protect refugees. The report said all of these measures violate international human rights standards ... of freedom from inhuman and degrading treatment, freedom from arbitrary detention, the right to due process, and a refugee’s right to travel documents," reported the AP news agency.
"A man who set fire to a mosque here shortly after Sept 11, 2001, and then bragged about the attack to friends was sentenced to six years in jail yesterday. In handing down the sentence against Teerence Hanlon, 24, Judge Manus Boyce called on authorities to allow for harsher penalties against people convicted of racially motivated crimes," reported the AFP news service.
"A topless model, an Australian con man, the prime minister’s wife and a £500,000-property deal. It was a story Britain’s tabloid press could not resist, even if it was all perfectly legal. But Cherie Blair and her husband’s office have turned the saga into a small political crisis by at first denying, then confirming, that ex-convict Peter Foster helped her buy two apartments. The situation was exacerbated on Monday by news that Cherie had involved herself in Foster’s legal difficulties by speaking on the telephone with his lawyers," reported the AP news agency.
"Foreign ministry officials said the shipment of North Korean-made Scud missiles seized by the US navy had been freed and was headed for port in Yemen. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the shipment was released after high-level contact between Yemen and the United States. US Vice-President Dick Cheney told Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh that President George W. Bush ordered the shipment to be returned," reported the AP news agency.
"The United States reminded Iraq and other countries that it was prepared to use nuclear weapons if necessary to respond to an attack from weapons of mass destruction. The warning, which underscored long-standing US policy leaving open the use of nuclear weapons if needed, was contained in a statement of US strategy against nuclear, chemical and biological weapons – the first update since 1993," reported the Reuters news agency.
"UN inspectors probed yesterday for the first time a chemical laboratory suspected by the British government to have been kitted out secretly to produce deadly weapons," reported the AFP news service.
"Some 250 US soldiers have been struck by suspected food poisoning at an army camp in the southern Kuwaiti desert, said a spokesman from Camp Doha, the main US army base in Kuwait," reported the AFP news service.
"Kuwait said on Tuesday it had stepped up security after Iraqi President Saddam Hussein urged Kuwaitis in a speech to struggle against US forces in the oil-rich Gulf Arab state," reported the Reuters news agency.
"Iraqi opposition groups said on Tuesday work could start in the next few days to train thousands of President Saddam Hussein’s opponents for combat. They said US defence officials and Iraqi opposition figures were working out the training programme," reported the Reuters news agency.
"At the height of the Christmas shopping season New Yorkers are bracing themselves for a public transport workers strike that will cripple the city and leave it in chaos. Though under state law it is illegal for workers of such essential services to go on strike, the workers union have given notice they will walk out on Sunday if the transport authority does not agree to their demand for a 24% wage increase over three years and better medical benefits," reported the AP news agency.
"British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s embattled wife, a successful lawyer, has made a sobbing appeal for understanding after a week of media revelations about her links with a convicted fraudster," reported the Reuters news agency.
"America’s doctrine of pre-emptive strikes misfired at its first outing when the US Navy was humiliatingly forced to release a seized shipment of North Korean missiles and allow its passage to Yemen. In the face of a furious reaction from the Yemeni government – one of the Bush administration’s allies in its war against terrorism – the US had to admit that the cargo was legitimate," reported the Guardian Newspapers Limited.
"The United States won Qatari approval for major improvements to an air base in this Gulf nation that would play a central role if US President George W. Bush ordered war against Iraq. Upon his arrival here last night, Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed an agreement giving the go-ahead for several construction projects at al-Udeid air base. He said they would improve the quality of life for the 3,300 US troops there and give them more state-of-the-art capability," reported the AP news agency.
"Military and civilian opponents of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said on Wednesday that the United States should spare the Iraqi army if and when it tries to overthrow the Iraqi leader by force. Their point of view indicates the difficulty Washington faces in dealing with an Iraqi opposition which wants to get rid of Saddam but does not always agree with the approaches proposed by the Bush administration. General Najeb al-Salhi, a prominent Iraqi defector, told reporters that the important point which ... was ... submitted to the Americans was that if any military operations are conducted to overthrow the current Iraqi regime, these operations must not target the infrastructure, Iraqi civilians and the Iraqi armed forces and, to be precise, the Iraqi army," reported the Reuters news agency.
"In the symposium, titled Islam: Fostering Peace and Dialogue in an Interdependent World, which was jointly organised by representatives of OIC member countries in Japan and the Japan Diet Committee on Islam, Malaysian PM Dr. Mahathir said the Muslims are not anti-Jews. But if the Christians or the Jews expropriate Muslim land and expel them, then they, like everybody else, will fight to regain their land, and other Muslims will support those who have been deprived of their land because there is a common bond in their religion. They are doing everything possible to increase terrorism. He said it was not Islam, as a religion, that caused terrorism but the oppression, the humiliation and the abuses of the Muslims in the world. But the powers that be have not learned how to handle the war against terrorism," reported the Malaysian Star newspaper.
"US officials believe Iraq’s arms declaration has omissions big enough to drive a tank through and fails to account for missing chemical and biological weapons. Washington has said Iraq’s 12,000-page weapons document, which could mean the difference between war and peace, is likely to take weeks to analyse. But the New York Times said US officials had reached a preliminary conclusion that the dossier on Iraq’s nuclear, biological and chemical arms programmes had major gaps," reported the Reuters news agency.
"UN arms experts used a hotline to senior Iraqi officials yesterday to resolve a first hitch in the disarmament process during an inspection of a hospital," reported the AFP news service.
"The UN nuclear watchdog agency said yesterday it was aware of new nuclear facilities under construction in Iran, which US officials said could be used to make weapons, and planned to inspect them in February," reported the Reuters news agency.
"The United States launched a US$29mil a year programme on Thursday to promote democracy and open markets in the Middle East while Arabs said they would prefer US efforts to end Israeli occupation and avoid what they fear would be a devastating war with Iraq," reported the Reuters news agency.
"Seven Palestinians, five of them unarmed, and two Israeli soldiers were killed in separate incidents on Thursday in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank city of Hebron," reported the Reuters news agency.
"The top prosecutor for Massachusetts on Thursday accused the Archdiocese of Boston of endangering countless children by covering up the behaviour of paedophile priests for decades and possibly generations. Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly denounced Roman Catholic church officials for systematically failing to report child abusers to law enforcement authorities over the years, but stopped short of announcing criminal charges," reported the Reuters news agency.
"The European Union rebuffed yesterday fierce pressure from Ankara and Washington to give Turkey a swift date for entry talks, saying it would take a decision in two years’ time based on its human rights record. Several EU leaders said public hectoring by Turkey’s new leaders and intense lobbying by US President George W. Bush had been inappropriate and harmed Ankara’s cause," reported the Reuters news agency.
"President George Bush, in a stinging rebuke of a fellow Republican, said on Thursday it was offensive and wrong for Senate Republican leader Trent Lott to say it would have been better if Strom Thurmond, a segregationist, had won the US presidency in 1948. While the president sought to distance himself and his party from the top Senate Republican’s comments, the White House said Bush did not think Lott should step aside, as some Democrats and civil rights groups have demanded," reported the Reuters news agency.
"An Egyptian student jailed after the Sept 11 attacks on suspicion of having an aviation radio in his hotel room sued the Hilton Hotels Corp and an FBI agent on Thursday, alleging they caused his false arrest," reported the Reuters news agency.
"North Korea called for an apology from the United States yesterday for unpardonable piracy after a North Korean ship containing 15 Scud missiles was detained on its way to Yemen, a demand branded absurd by a US official. The incident was the first of two crises to involve the reclusive communist state, dubbed by Washington as part of an axis of evil, this week," reported the Reuters news agency.
"North Korea’s plan to fire up a mothballed nuclear reactor has spooked world leaders, but someone forgot to tell ordinary South Koreans there was a new crisis brewing. The government warned that it would crack down hard on any violence during massive countrywide anti-US protests planned for this weekend," reported the Reuters news agency.
