The world in brief

— QUOTE OF THE DAY "The Israeli prime minister has stated that he will not accept a timetable, and we say we will not accept negotiations without a timetable." Ahmed Qureia, the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, demanding a deadline for establishing a Palestinian state Article, 5A

End Cuba embargo, U.N. urges U.S. 184-4

UNITED NATIONS - The General Assembly voted for the 16th-straight year Tuesday to urge the United States to end its trade embargo against Cuba.

The 192-member world body approved a resolution calling for the 46-year-old U.S. economic and commercial embargo against Cuba to be repealed as soon as possible.

"The blockade had never been enforced with such viciousness as over the last year," Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told the assembly, accusing the Bush administration of adopting "new measures bordering on madness and fanaticism."

Delegates in the General Assembly chamber burst into applause when the vote in favor of the resolution flashed on the screen - 184 to 4 with 1 abstention.

The vote came less than a week after President Bush delivered his first major address on Cuban policy in four years, attacking the communist government and challenging the international community to help the island shed Fidel Castro's rule.

"It is long past time that the Cuban people enjoy the blessings of economic and political freedom," U.S. diplomat Ronald Godard said just before Tuesday's vote.

Lebanese lawmaker: Syria out to kill him

CAIRO, Egypt - The leader of Lebanon's parliamentary majority claimed Tuesday that Syria was behind a plot to assassinate him and the Lebanese prime minister ahead of crucial presidential elections next month.

Saad Hariri did not elaborate on the plot, but when asked about reports that Syrian officials were behind it, he said, "We have information about this, and it is correct."

"The assassination is not only of me but of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora also," said Hariri, whose father, former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, was assassinated in a 2005 Beirut truck bombing that was widely blamed on Syria.

Syrian officials in Damascus could not be immediately reached for comment.

Lebanon's anti-Syrian groups claim Damascus is behind a two-year series of killings that has claimed the lives of several anti-Syrian politicians and public figures. The latest was the Sept. 19 slaying of lawmaker Antoine Ghanem in a Beirut car bombing.

Syria has denied involvement in any of the killings.

In first, Putin memorializes Stalin victims

MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin warned Tuesday against political ideas that are "placed above basic values" as he for the first time joined public commemorations on the 70th anniversary of mass killings ordered by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

Putin's presence at the Butovo firing range, where some 20,000 priests, artists and other "enemies of the people" were executed in 1937-38, was a noteworthy gesture by the former KGB officer, who has restored Soviet-era symbols and tried to soften public perceptions of Stalin.

Putin joined the head of the Russian Orthodox Church for a ceremony at the recently built Church of New Martyrs and Confessors and laid red roses at a 40-foot wooden cross carved at a monastery on the White Sea's Solovki Islands. The islands were home to one of the earliest and most notorious labor camps in the Soviets' gulag network.

Stolen Neolithic artifacts back in Greece

ATHENS, Greece - A stolen collection of about 100 artifacts dating back more than 7,000 years were displayed in Greece on Tuesday, for the first time since being smuggled to Germany.

The Neolithic-era artifacts were stolen by armed burglars from a private collection in Larissa, central Greece, in 1985 and seized by German police in Munich a year later. The case had been virtually forgotten until a Munich court ruled in August that the loot should be returned to Greece.

"These works are exceptional examples of the Neolithic [culture]," Culture Minister Michalis Liapis said. "We are very happy to get them back, as we consider antiquities theft a global scourge."

The 94 stone and pottery works - statuettes, tools and tiny vases - mostly date between 6500 and 5300 B.C. and are from the central Thessaly region, where Greece's most important Neolithic settlements have been excavated.

Archaeologist Nikos Kaltsas, director of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, said the artifacts, which are up to 5 inches high, "date to the dawn of human awareness" and appear to include portraits of Neolithic women.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 10/31/2007

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