MIDDLE EAST

ALLAWI RULES OUT TALKS WITH SADDAM LOYALISTS BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraq’s interim prime minister went to Jordan yesterday for meetings with tribal figures and other influential Iraqis in a bid to encourage Sunni Muslims to participate in the January 30 elections, but he ruled out contacts with insurgent leaders and former members of Saddam Hussein’s deposed regime.

Insurgents targeted American troops yesterday in Baghdad and in and around Beiji, a city north of the capital, killing four Iraqi civilians and wounding at least 20 other people, including three American soldiers. Three Iraqi children aged 3, 4, and 5 were killed when two mortar rounds struck their neighborhood in Baqouba, the American military said.

The attacks came as the American military announced that its November death toll reached at least 135. That figure equaled the highest number of American deaths in a single month since the Iraq war began in March 2003.

Prime Minister Allawi, who arrived in Amman late yesterday, sought to play down expectations that his meetings would mark a breakthrough in curbing the violence, saying Jordan was simply the first stop on a tour that would take him to Germany and Russia.

Before leaving Baghdad, Mr. Allawi said his government would pursue contacts with “tribal figures” and other influential Iraqis to encourage broad participation in the elections, which some Sunni clerics have threatened to boycott.

But Mr. Allawi branded reports that he would meet with former Baath party figures as “an invention by the media,” although word of such contacts came last week from the Iraqi Foreign Ministry. Former Baath party leaders are believed to form the core of the insurgency.

Ministry officials had said that Arab governments urged the Iraqi authorities to make contacts with Iraqi exiles and opposition figures during a conference last week at the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheik.

Arab officials fear that without some overture by the Iraqi government toward Sunni Arab insurgents, many Sunnis may boycott the January 30 elections, calling into question the legitimacy of the new administration.

– Associated Press

CARIBBEAN

DISSIDENT WRITER FREED IN CUBA HAVANA – Cuban authorities yesterday freed dissident writer Raul Rivero, the latest of half a dozen political prisoners released over the past few days in a move widely seen as intended to court favor with the European Union.

“This was a gesture to improve relations, little by little,” the 59-year-old Rivero said, speaking from his Havana apartment where he was surrounded by family hours after his release.

Mr. Rivero, the best-known among 75 dissidents rounded up in a crackdown in March 2003, was freed on medical parole yesterday after a checkup at a Havana prison hospital for emphysema and cysts on a kidney.

He had been sentenced to 20 years in prison on charges of working with America to undermine Fidel Castro’s communist government. Mr. Rivero and the other activists denied the charges.

Also freed yesterday was opposition party member Osvaldo Alfonso Valdes. Mr. Alfonso Valdes, 39, was also arrested in March 2003 and had been sentenced to 18 years in prison. The releases came a day after Cuba unexpectedly freed three other men jailed in last year’s crackdown: economics writer Oscar Espinosa Chepe and dissidents Marcelo Lopez and Margarito Broche. Seven others were released earlier. Like Mr. Rivero, all had health problems in jail. Mr. Castro’s government made no public statement about the releases, but analysts said Cuba was eager to avoid the possibility the dissidents would die in jail, and also wanted to signal flexibility to the E.U. amid warming relations with Spain.

– Associated Press

WESTERN EUROPE

DUTCH HOSPITAL EUTHANIZING ILL NEWBORNS AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – A hospital in the Netherlands – the first nation to permit euthanasia – recently proposed guidelines for mercy killings of terminally ill newborns, and then made a startling disclosure: It has already begun carrying out such procedures, which include administering a lethal dose of sedatives.

The announcement by the Groningen Academic Hospital came amid a growing discussion in Holland on whether to legalize euthanasia on people incapable of deciding for themselves whether they want to end their lives – a prospect viewed with horror by euthanasia opponents and as a natural evolution by advocates.

In August, the main Dutch doctors’ association KNMG urged the Health Ministry to create an independent board to review euthanasia cases for terminally ill people “with no free will,” including children, the severely mentally retarded, and people left in an irreversible coma after an accident. The Health Ministry is preparing its response, which could come as soon as December, a spokesman said.

– Associated Press

EAST ASIA

DEATH TOLL 166 IN MINE BLAST; SECOND EXPLOSION REPORTED BEIJING – The death toll in a massive coal mine explosion in central China rose today to 166 after scores of missing miners were declared dead, government radio reported.

The report on the Web site of China National Radio came after officials said rescue efforts were being blocked by fires and toxic fumes in the Chenjiashan Coal Mine, which was hit by the huge gas explosion on Sunday. The death toll earlier was reported at 65, with 101 miners still missing. No further details were given.

The accident was the deadliest to hit China’s troubled coal mining industry in at least five years and occurred despite a government safety campaign to reduce fatalities among miners. In a separate accident, a government news agency reported that 13 people were killed and three missing in an explosion early today in a coal mine in the southern province of Guizhou.

– Associated Press