WESTERN EUROPE

EUROPE CONSIDERS BIGGER ROLE IN IRAQ

BRUSSELS, Belgium – European Union leaders yesterday considered taking on a bigger role in rebuilding Iraq and forging stronger ties with re-elected President Bush. At the opening of a two-day summit, the incoming European Commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso, said he put together a new executive team, signaling the prospect of an early end to problems surrounding his original lineup. In a key change, Mr. Barroso said the Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini, would be the next justice commissioner, instead of conservative Italian Rocco Buttiglione, who upset many European Parliament members with anti-gay comments in confirmation hearings in October. The E.U. leaders met after Bush won a second term and considered ways to get Washington to work more closely with Europe in finding a solution in Iraq. “The world has many problems, problems that without any doubt can be solved better if the cooperation between the Europeans and the Americans is as close as possible,” said E.U. foreign policy chief Javier Solana. “I’m sure we will have some frictions during the four years, but I’m sure also we will be able to overcome those frictions with goodwill.”

– Associated Press

MEMBERS OF HUMAN-TRAFFICKING GANG ARRESTED

LONDON – Police yesterday arrested 18 alleged members of a gang suspected of smuggling hundreds of people from Turkey to Britain, authorities said. The arrests in southern London and Surrey were part of a yearlong investigation coordinated with authorities in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, where more suspects were being arrested, police said. “Working with our European colleagues in this way has enabled us to take out an entire human trafficking network from route to source,” said assistant commissioner of London’s metropolitan police, Tarique Ghaffur. All 18 are suspected of conspiring to facilitate trafficking of illegal immigrants and money laundering. The alleged ringleader, who was among those arrested, is believed to own 10 fast-food restaurants employing illegal Turkish immigrants in the London area, police said. More than 50 police and immigration officers searched several homes and businesses, including fast-food outlets. At one home, they found about $20,300 in cash, police said. In Germany, five other people were held after raids in Hamburg and Cologne. German police said they arrested a 32-year-old Turk suspected of smuggling up to 100 illegal Turkish immigrants through Hamburg in the last three years. Each immigrant would pay about $7,700 for transport, they said.

– Associated Press

DUTCH POLITICIAN THREATENED IN LETTER LEFT ON BODY OF FILMMAKER

A letter left on the body of a Dutch filmmaker murdered in Amsterdam contained death threats against a politician and was signed by a suspected terrorist group, the justice minister said yesterday, as police pressed an investigation into radical Islamic groups. Dutch authorities have arrested nine men – eight of them Moroccan – all believed tied to Islamic terrorist groups, in Tuesday’s shooting and stabbing of Theo van Gogh. Authorities have said they are investigating possible links between the suspects and international terrorist groups, including those responsible for the Casablanca bombings in May last year. The justice minister, Piet Hein Donner, said yesterday the note contained a “direct warning” to the film’s screenwriter, Ayaan Hirst Ali, a Somali-born lawmaker who has outraged fellow Muslims by criticizing Islamic customs and the failure of Muslim families to adopt Dutch ways. She had been under police protection before the slaying. Van Gogh received death threats after the film was released in August. Mr. Donner said the way the 5-page letter “was presented indicates that it is not from one person, but a movement.” The letter, which was addressed to Ali, said “I know definitely that you, Hirsi Ali, will go down.” It was signed “Saifu Deen al Muwahhied.”

– Associated Press

CARIBBEAN

CUBA GIVES CITIZENS ANOTHER WEEK TO CHANGE U.S. DOLLARS

HAVANA – Because of the huge demand to dispose of the American bills that were legal tender in communist Cuba for a more than a decade, the Central Bank said yesterday that people will have an extra week to exchange their American money for a local currency tied to the dollar. The need to extend the two-week transition period indicated that economic planners underestimated how many dollars had entered the country since they were made legal tender to help capture hard currency after the loss of Soviet aid and trade. President Castro has said the elimination of the dollar from circulation in Cuba is necessary to protect the island nation from an increasing American crackdown on foreign banks sending American cash to Cuba. “The attitude of our people in the face of the most recent economic aggressions by the U.S. government has been an example of patriotism, discipline, and confidence in the revolution,” the Central Bank said in a note published in the Communist Party’s newspaper Granma. “Considering this exemplary reaction, and taking into account the repeated requests of the people, it has been decided to extend until Sunday, November 14, the period stated” to exchange dollars into convertible Cuban pesos without paying a new 10% surcharge. The previous deadline was this coming Sunday.

– Associated Press

WEST AFRICA

IVORY COAST WARPLANES BOMB CITY

BOUAKE, Ivory Coast – Ivory Coast warplanes bombed the largest city of the rebel-held north yesterday in waves of attacks, breaking a more than year-old cease-fire in the civil war that split West Africa’s one-time economic powerhouse. The government’s Russian-made Sukhoi jets launched attacks at dawn and swept back in for at least two more raids by nightfall, targeting rebel military and civilian headquarters and television in surprise attacks that left civilians cowering in their homes. “We are going to reconquer our territory and reunify Ivory Coast,” said a government military chief for operations, Colonel Philippe Mangou. Rebel leader Guillaume Soro, reached after the first attack, called the government offensive a “unilateral…flagrant violation” of Ivory Coast’s peace deals and complained about the inaction of the 10,000 foreign peacekeepers in the country. The rebel chief headed back to Bouake from nearby Togo, where he had gone for regional consultations on the deteriorating situation in his home country. “We’ve just been bombed. The war has started again,” rebel military commander Cherif Ousmane said after the first raid jolted residents awake. Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa producer, has been split since a September 2002 coup attempt launched the country into civil war. A 2003 peace deal, brokered under pressure from former colonial ruler France and others, ended major fighting. But a power-sharing deal failed to take hold, and distrust and ethnic, regional, and political hatreds continue to run strong. The civil war killed thousands and forced more than 1 million people from their homes.

– Associated Press