WESTERN EUROPE

POLICE TO STOP PLACING EXPLOSIVES IN PASSENGER LUGGAGE

PARIS – French police yesterday ended their practice of hiding plastic explosives in air passengers’ luggage to train bomb-sniffing dogs after one such bag got lost, possibly ending up on a flight out of Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport.

The luggage that police used Friday for the exercise has yet to turn up. Three flights that arrived in Los Angeles and New York were searched, but it was not found.

And no passenger has contacted French authorities to report the surprise discovery of a bag of nearly five ounces of explosives tucked into his or her suitcase. Police say there was no chance the explosives could go off, since they were not connected to detonators. Still, Prime Minister Raffarin was critical of the mistake. “The fight against terrorism and insecurity is a priority for the government,” a statement by his office said. “But [Raffarin] made clear his concern in the face of the way the training for explosives searches was conducted at Roissy Charles de Gaulle.”

Mr. Raffarin said the procedure was “susceptible to making the relevant passenger run a risk in the eyes of foreign authorities when arriving in the destination country.” Police soon after announced they’d ordered a stop.

– Associated Press

MIDDLE EAST

PUTIN VISITS LONGTIME RUSSIAN FOE TURKEY

ANKARA, Turkey – President Putin made the first official visit by a Russian leader to Turkey yesterday, looking to strengthen an economic relationship that is turning a country that has been a foe since the times of the Ottomans and the tsars into a newfound trading partner.

Mr. Putin was to have dinner with President Sezer before official talks today. The two-day visit to Ankara, which will include a business forum, is expected to produce six cooperation agreements on issues including defense, finance, and energy in addition to a friendship and partnership declaration.

Russia has urged Turkey to crack down on charities it claims channel money and weapons to Chechen rebels. In an apparent gesture to Mr. Putin, Turkish authorities apprehended nine suspected Chechen rebels and three pro-Chechen Turks last week, and the Anatolia news agency reported Sunday that police had linked them to Al Qaeda.

The visit marks a milestone in relations between two countries whose meetings in past centuries often came on the battlefield as they struggled for control of lands from the Balkans to the Black Sea and beyond to China’s borders.

– Associated Press

EAST ASIA

U.N. NUCLEAR INSPECTORS RETURN TO SOUTH KOREA

Four inspectors from the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency began additional investigations today into South Korea’s past secret nuclear experiments, officials said.

Last month, the Vienna, Austria-based International Atomic Energy Agency decided not to refer the issue of South Korea’s nuclear experiments to the U.N. Security Council, which could have imposed punitive measures.

Still, the IAEA’s board of governors criticized South Korea for conducting plutonium and uranium experiments in 1982 and 2000 without reporting them to the agency. The government has repeatedly said the experiments were unrelated to any weapons program and were for scientific research only.

The inspection team, which arrived yesterday, also planned to participate in a meeting this week between South Korea and the IAEA to discuss ways to enhance inspections, a South Korea Science and Technology Ministry official said on condition of anonymity. The visit is the fourth by IAEA inspectors since South Korea revealed experiments earlier this year.

Plutonium and enriched uranium are key ingredients in nuclear weapons, and revelations about the experiments threatened to hobble international efforts to persuade the South’s rival, North Korea, to curb its nuclear ambitions.

– Associated Press

SOUTH ASIA

REMOTE-CONTROLLED BOMB KILLS 11 IN KASHMIR

SRINAGAR, India – A remote-controlled roadside bomb blew up an army patrol car in a pre-dawn attack yesterday in disputed Kashmir, killing an army major and 10 other men, police said. A man who said he spoke on behalf of the Hezb-ul Mujahedeen rebel group claimed responsibility in a call to a local news agency, the Central News Service. Hezb is the largest among the guerrilla groups fighting Indian security forces since 1989 to carve out a separate homeland or merge Kashmir with India’s neighbor Pakistan.

The powerful blast in Wachi village hurled the car skyward and left a 10-foot wide crater in the road, police officer Imtiyaz Ahmed said by telephone from the site of the blast, about 40 miles south of Srinagar, the summer capital of India’s Jammu-Kashmir state. “The car is completely damaged, totally twisted. It was hurled several meters from the crater,” Mr. Ahmed said. “The bodies of the victims are in pieces. It is a very awful sight.”

The car, a private sports utility vehicle being used by the army, was on night patrol when the explosion occurred, Mr. Ahmed said. The occupants included the major, eight army soldiers, a police officer, and the driver, he said.

– Associated Press

CENTRAL ASIA

MINE EXPLOSION KILLS 23 IN KAZAKHSTAN

ALMATY, Kazakhstan – Twenty-three people died and three others were injured yesterday in an explosion at a coal mine in the Karaganda region, officials said. Eighty-seven miners were working at the mine in the town of Shakhtinsk about 120 miles south of the capital, Astana, when the blast occurred at 3:08 a.m., said regional administration spokesman Zhanibek Sadykanov. Two injured miners were hospitalized and a third was released after treatment, he said. President Nazarbayev sent a letter of condolence to the families of the victims and ordered the government to pay them compensation, as well as carry out a full investigation, officials said. Mr. Sadykanov said a special commission was investigating the cause of the blast. Rescue operations were complete and work had started on restoring the mine, which is owned by Kazakhstan’s ISPAT-Karmet metal giant, said Nakyp Kapbasov, deputy regional emergencies agency chief. At least eight people have died in mining accidents in the central industrial Karaganda region this year.

– Associated Press