NORTH AMERICA

COURT REINSTATES LAWSUIT AGAINST VATICAN BANK

A federal appeals court reinstated a lawsuit yesterday that was brought by survivors of the Holocaust in Croatia, the Ukraine, and Yugoslavia who allege the Vatican Bank accepted millions of dollars of their valuables stolen by Nazi sympathizers.

The Vatican Bank, the financial arm of the Roman Catholic Church, denies allegations that during World War II it stored the looted assets from thousands of gypsies, Jews, Serbs, and others who were killed or captured by the Nazi-backed Ustasha regime that controlled Croatia.

A federal judge had dismissed the 1999 case, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the survivors should have their day in court in an effort to be compensated for their monetary losses, and to be given an accounting of what money, if any, the bank received from the Nazi-backed Ustasha regime.

– Associated Press

EAST ASIA

SOUTH KOREA BELIEVES REACTOR HAS BEEN SHUTTERED

South Korea said yesterday it believes a reactor at North Korea’s main nuclear complex has been shut down, a possible sign the communist state could be moving to harvest more weapons-grade plutonium.

The director-general of North American affairs at South Korea’s Foreign Ministry, Kim Sook, told KBS Radio that a shutdown of a nuclear reactor at the North’s main Yongbyon nuclear complex had been confirmed. Yongbyon houses a 5-megawatt reactor that generates spent fuel rods laced with plutonium, but they must be removed and reprocessed to extract the plutonium for use in an atomic weapon. They can be removed only if the reactor has been shut down. North Korea restarted the reactor after expelling U.N. monitors at the end of 2002.

– Associated Press

BEIJING WON’T COMMIT TO MEETING

BEIJING – Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura wrapped up a two-day visit to China yesterday aimed at halting the recent freefall in relations between the two countries but left with little to show for the talks. Beijing remained noncommittal over Japan’s request for a meeting between Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan and President Hu Jintao of China on the sidelines of an Asia-Africa summit in Indonesia planned for the upcoming weekend. Chinese officials said they were “studying” the idea and would respond in due course through diplomatic channels. Even as Japanese officials expressed concern about the violence in China directed against their embassy, consulates, and companies, Chinese officials repeated the claim that Japan was at fault for failing to own up to its militaristic past. “It shouldn’t be us who should apologize,” Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei told reporters. “It is Japan who should apologize.”

– Los Angeles Times

SOUTH ASIA

INDIA, PAKISTAN SAY THEY’RE CLOSE TO DEAL ON KASHMIR

NEW DELHI – India and Pakistan will reach a “final settlement” to the decades-old dispute over Kashmir, their leaders vowed yesterday, concluding three days of talks with a series of agreements to boost trade and cross-border travel.

With President Musharraf of Pakistan beside him, Prime Minister Singh of India announced the two had agreed to continue talks on Kashmir in “a sincere and purposeful and forward-looking manner for a final settlement.”

Although there was little sign of an impending breakthrough on the divided Himalayan region, both sides made significant progress in pushing a strategy that seeks to downplay their competing territorial claims to Kashmir – and emphasizes creating goodwill among the Kashmiri people. Reading from a joint statement, Mr. Singh said the two leaders “determined that the peace process was now irreversible.”

– Associated Press

PERSIAN GULF

IRAN SUSPENDS AL-JAZEERA OPERATIONS

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran suspended the nationwide operations of Arab TV broadcaster Al-Jazeera yesterday, accusing it of inflaming violent protests by the Arab minority in its southwest, state-run TV reported. Also, the government said two more protesters died in the unrest in Khuzistan province along the border with Iraq, raising the three-day toll to three dead and at least eight injured. Iran’s intelligence chief told the country’s official news agency that said 200 opposition-linked leaders of the demonstrations had been arrested.

– Associated Press