LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY
“We did succeed in having an election in
almost all over Afghanistan, but that does not mean that we did not have difficulties in
terms of arrangements for the elections.”
Waheed Omar,
spokesman of President Hamid Karzai, saying it’s too early judge the validity of parliamentary elections in the country Article, 1A
Israel to Palestine: Ease demands
JERUSALEM - With crisis looming for recently restarted Mideast peace talks, Israel’s deputy prime minister on Monday urged the Palestinians to relax their demand that a freeze on new Jewish settlement construction be extended past its planned weekend expiration.
Palestinian officials quickly rejected the idea, leaving a deadlock in place.
“In order to succeed in these negotiations both parties need to understand that [neither side] can come out of them with all that they wanted,” said Dan Meridor, describing the dispute as an indicator of Palestinian good faith on broader issues.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and other top officials have repeatedly said that if Israel resumes settlement construction in the West Bank they will walk away from the talks, which resumed this month under U.S. aegis. Responding to Meridor’s comments, Palestinian spokesman Husam Zomlot said that position remained unchanged.
“Flexibility and creativity do not apply on illegality,” he said.
Suspected U.S. drone attack kills 6
MIR ALI, Pakistan - Suspected U.S. drones fired missiles at militant targets in northwest Pakistan on Monday, killing six people in the 15th such attack this month, the most intense barrage since the strikes began in 2004, said intelligence officials.
U.S. officials do not publicly acknowledge firing the missiles. It is unclear why the attacks have spiked.
On Monday, three missiles struck a house and vehicle linked to militants in a village near Mir Ali, a town in the North Waziristan tribal area that is under effective militant control, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Pakistani intelligence officials have said most of this month’s strikes have targeted forces led by Jalaluddin Haqqani, an Afghan commander whose forces are one of the greatest threats to foreign troops in Afghanistan.
N. Korea to hold rare party congress
North Korea will hold its first party congress in 30 years next week.
The Workers Party of Korea will meet on Sept. 28 in the capital of Pyongyang to choose “its supreme leadership body,” the official Korean Central News Agency reported Monday. Kim Jong Il was chosen as a delegate to the meeting, “representing the unanimous will of all the members of the party,” the news agency said.
Kim’s position as successor to his father, North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, was publicly announced after the last party congress in 1980, six years after he was named heir. Kim Jong Il, 68, took over control in 1994 after his father died.
Kim named his youngest son as successor, the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper reported Sunday, citing a photograph of an official ruling party document. Other media have carried similar reports.
North Korea said June 26 that it would hold the congress in early September. The delay sparked speculation of internal divisions over who should head the party.
Monsoons, landslides kill 47 in India
LUCKNOW, India - Heavy monsoon rains and landslides swept the hilly areas of northern India over the weekend, killing at least 47 people, officials said Monday.
Twenty-four people died Sunday as falling boulders crushed their homes in three villages in Almorah district in Uttrakhand state, said Prashant Kumar Tamta, a state government spokesman.
Another 23 people were either swept away by floodwaters or died when homes collapsed in landslides in the Pitthoragarh, Champawat and Uttarkashi districts of the state Saturday and Sunday, Tamta said.
Rains continued to lash the region Monday, threatening dozens of villages near Tehri Dam whose water level was nearing the danger level.
On Friday, a boat carrying mostly schoolchildren capsized in a flooded river near Faizabad, a town in Uttar Pradesh state, drowning 15 people, said Surendra Srivastava, a police spokesman.
The annual monsoon season from June to October takes a heavy human toll in South Asia every year.
Front Section, Pages 5 on 09/21/2010