PERSIAN GULF

FRENCH HOSTAGES HANDED TO OPPOSITION GROUP

BAGHDAD, Iraq – A Paris newspaper editor said there had been positive movement in the effort to free two captive French journalists yesterday, while a separate insurgent group said it had killed three Turkish captives.

The kidnappers in Iraq have handed over the pair to an Iraqi Sunni Muslim opposition group, Jean de Belot, managing editor of Le Figaro newspaper, said on France-Info radio. But he stressed that their status wasn’t completely clear. “We must be prudent in this kind of mixed-up situation because we know well that until the good news arrives, we can’t let ourselves be absolutely reassured.” The French foreign minister, Michel Barnier, was cautiously optimistic.

“According to the indications which were given to us and we are studying at this moment with caution, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot are alive, in good health and are being well treated,” he said at a news conference in Amman, Jordan. Mr. De Belot claimed that the opposition favors the release of the hostages.

“That is an extremely positive point,” he said. “But we must be prudent in this kind of mixed-up situation because we know well that until the good news arrives, we can’t let ourselves be absolutely reassured.”

Insurgents waging a violent insurgency in Iraq have increasingly turned to kidnapping foreigners here as part of an effort to drive out coalition forces and contractors. In the past week, insurgents have killed an Italian journalist and 12 Nepalese workers, while seven truckers from India, Kenya, and Egypt were released after their employer paid a $500,000 ransom. Secretary of State Powell acknowledged yesterday that the Bush administration miscalculated the strength of the insurgency here, but said America would “not become faint of heart” in enforcing its Iraq policy.

– Associated Press

SOUTHEAST ASIA

MALAYSIAN COURT FREES FORMER DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER

His sodomy conviction overturned by Malaysia’s highest court, Anwar Ibrahim was set free yesterday six years to the day after the one-time heir apparent to the country’s premiership plunged into a divisive fight with his political mentor.

The 57-year-old emerged noticeably aged and nearly crippled from a back injury worsened by a police beating and insisting he was jailed on trumped-up charges, but Mr. Anwar struck a conciliatory tone toward the man who sent him to prison, former Prime Minister Mohamad.

“I bear no malice against him. Let him retire,” said Mr. Anwar, who intends to go to Germany for back surgery, perhaps as early as Friday. “I feel vindicated. This is all about justice.”

Mr. Mahathir, who retired 10 months ago after 22 years as one of Asia’s most combative leaders, showed no remorse yesterday over Mr. Anwar’s firing as deputy prime minister or over the years spent behind bars by the man he had groomed as a successor.

“I’m not going to lose any sleep,” Mahathir said. “I still believe that he’s guilty. My conscience is clear.”

– Associated Press

EAST ASIA

U.S. ARMY READY TO PUT DESERTER BACK IN UNIFORM

TOKYO – Responding to Sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins’ pledge to surrender after spending four decades in North Korea, American military officials say they are ready to put the frail 64-year-old back in uniform, give him a haircut, set him up in on-base housing – and then try him for desertion.

“We’re always ready to take in deserters and receive them back,” said Major John Amberg, spokesman for the U.S. Army’s Japan headquarters at Camp Zama, just south of Tokyo.

Ending months of silence, Jenkins said in a statement this week he would turn himself in at Camp Zama as soon as he’s deemed fit enough to leave the hospital. Jenkins has been hospitalized in Tokyo since he was flown here on a plane chartered by the Japanese government in July. The Japanese press have speculated Jenkins could be released within days.

Once he surrenders, he would be assigned to a new unit, receive pay and other benefits and be able to live on base with his family. He would be placed under custody only if he is considered a flight risk, dangerous, or seen as likely to tamper with witnesses. The Jenkins case, however, is anything but ordinary.

His wife, Hitomi Soga, is one of more than a dozen Japanese who were kidnapped by North Korean agents in the 1970s and ’80s and forced to train the North’s spies. Seen as a tragic hero in Japan, she was repatriated after a landmark summit between North Korea leader Kim Jong Il and Prime Minister Koizumi in 2002. Jenkins, fearing prosecution, stayed behind with their two daughters. Facing an outpouring of sympathy for Ms. Soga, Mr. Koizumi personally led the effort to reunite the family in Japan.

– Associated Press

WESTERN EUROPE

HEAD-SCARF LAW TAKES EFFECT IN FRANCE

PARIS – Muslim girls largely complied with a controversial ban on headscarves in the classroom on the first day of school yesterday, officials said, as the government and Muslim leaders tried to avoid any confrontation that might provoke Islamic insurgents holding two French hostages in Iraq.

The insurgents have threatened to kill the two French journalists if the law is not revoked – a demand France has rejected. Millions of students returned to school yesterday with the law in effect for the first time. Muslim leaders – even ones opposing the law – called for restraint in defying it. “The hostage takers are just waiting for a provocation,” Mohammed Bechari, a vice president of the French Council for the Muslim Faith, told Le Figaro newspaper. “We must be responsible.”

The education minister said 240 girls showed up for the first day of classes with head scarves on – five times fewer than last year. Of those, 170 ended up taking their scarves off in school. The 70 who still refused entered into talks with officials, said the minister, Francois Fillon. The minister has put in place a two-week period of “dialogue” to persuade girls to remove head coverings, rather than outright expel those who refuse as some schools have in past cases. Among the cases of defiance, two high school girls in the Strasbourg region decided to go back home rather than take off their scarves, education officials for the eastern city said.

– Associated Press

REMAINS OF NAZI-ERA JEWISH VICTIMS LAID TO REST

WARSAW, Poland – The remains of 11 people believed to be Jews killed in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against Nazi occupiers were buried yesterday in a ceremony hailed by Jewish leaders as a sign of the rekindled relationship between their community and other Poles.

The victims’ bones were laid in a simple pine coffin and lowered into the ground, along with bags containing the clothes and shoes of the men, women, and children, in the capital’s Jewish cemetery. Members of Warsaw’s tiny Jewish community and Israeli Ambassador David Peleg then shoveled earth over the remains.

A second pine coffin, with the remains of about 10 other Holocaust victims recently discovered in a mass grave in a town outside Warsaw, was also buried.

“This is an important event in that it enables us to pay further respect to the victims of the Nazi terror,” said Warsaw’s main Rabbi Michael Schudrich before the ceremony.

“It is also an example of Polish-Jewish cooperation – that our mutual experience of World War II is binding us more together as we build together toward the future.”

– Associated Press