SOUTH AMERICA

POWERFUL EARTHQUAKE RATTLES NORTHERN CHILE

SANTIAGO, Chile – A powerful earthquake rattled Chile’s remote northern Andes near the Bolivian border yesterday, killing at least eight people and causing widespread damage in several mountain villages.

Interior Minister Jorge Correa said there could be more victims in some isolated communities, but added no details were immediately available because of poor communication.

The quake had a preliminary magnitude of 7.9, according to both the U.S. Geological Survey and Chilean officials, making it the world’s third strongest temblor since the quake that set off an Asian tsunami in December.

Mr. Correa said a boulder fell on an automobile killing all five passengers – three adults and two children – near Iquique, a port city 1,200 miles north of Santiago, the capital. The other victims were three elderly men killed in two different Andean villages. One of the victims was a disabled 80-year-old man who was killed when a wall collapsed at his home.

The government emergency bureau in coastal Iquique said several people were injured but did not provide a number or other details.

The quake struck at 6:44 p.m.and was centered in an unpopulated Andean area, about 940 miles north of Santiago, the capital. It was also felt in several cities in southern Peru and Bolivia, but no victims or major damage were reported in either neighboring country. In the Bolivian capital of La Paz, many people took to the streets in panic.

– Associated Press

MIDDLE EAST

ISLAMIC TERRORISTS THREATEN TO CALL OFF CEASE-FIRE

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Islamic terrorists renewed threats yesterday to call off a cease-fire but said they would continue to observe the shaky truce despite a recent flare-up in fighting with Israeli troops.

A collapse in the four-month-old truce would be a major setback for the Palestinian Arab leader Mahmoud Abbas, who hopes to restart peace talks with Israel. The Israelis have said there can be no peace talks until Mr. Abbas takes tougher steps toward reining in militants. The cease-fire, declared on February 8 by Mr. Abbas and Prime Minister Sharon, has brought a noticeable lull in fighting after more than four years of bloodshed. However, sporadic violence, including Israeli arrest raids and Palestinian mortar and rocket attacks, has continued.

– Associated Press

PERSIAN GULF

SAUDI KING SUED IN BRITISH COURT

He is King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s wealthiest men. She is Janan Harb, who claims to be one of his wives and is now seeking a share of his estimated $58 billion fortune in maintenance. For 18 months, their lawyers have been fighting in London’s Royal Courts of Justice. His lawyers argue that she cannot press ahead with her claim because the king, who is 82 and in poor health, is entitled to “sovereign immunity,” which protects heads of state from being sued in the courts of another country.

The legal battle has been conducted in total secrecy, so much so that the case was given a fictitious name to protect the king’s identity and is subject to the most stringent orders designed to keep it out of the media. But now Mrs. Harb, 57, has won a significant victory in what promises to be a long and contentious dispute.

Three appeals court judges have granted her permission to appeal against the ruling that the king was entitled to sovereign immunity, and have ruled that the appeal must be held in open court. So the stage is now set for a public airing of the affairs of the notoriously secretive Saudi royal family, of which King Fahd is head.

– The Daily Telegraph

EAST AFRICA

BURUNDI FORCIBLY REPATRIATES THOUSANDS OF RWANDAN REFUGEES

BUJUMBURA, Burundi – Burundi has forcibly repatriated 3,600 Rwandan refugees, putting them in trucks and transporting them out of the country, the United Nations and government officials said yesterday.

Some of the deportees jumped from the trucks, breaking their limbs, trying to resist being sent back to Rwanda, witnesses said. Most of the Rwandans in Burundi are women and children who fled their homeland because of rumors of violence as community courts in Rwanda begin to try people accused of participating in the country’s 1994 genocide of minority Tutsis.

Burundians have been fleeing into Rwanda to escape unrest as their own country seeks an end to its 11-year civil war between members of its own Hutu majority and Tutsi minority. Burundi and Rwanda decided over the weekend to strip each other’s refugees of asylum status so they can be repatriated, drawing condemnation yesterday from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva.

Under the plan, more than 8,000 Rwandan refugees in Burundi, and 7,000 Burundians in Rwanda would be relabeled as illegal immigrants as a prelude to being sent back, the agency said. It said the action may violate international law.

– Associated Press

CENTRAL EUROPE

ELBARADEI RETURNS AS HEAD OF U.N. NUCLEAR WATCHDOG AGENCY

VIENNA, Austria – Mohammed ElBaradei won a third term yesterday as head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency and said he was “grateful to the United States” after the Bush administration last week publicly dropped its opposition to him. Mr. ElBaradei, a 62-year-old Egyptian diplomat, said his priorities will include fighting the threat of nuclear proliferation and the potential menace posed by nuclear terrorism – issues on which he said he has full support from America.

Administration hawks accuse Mr. ElBaradei of being too mild on Iran and of trying to obstruct America’s invasion of Iraq by questioning American intelligence that asserted Saddam Hussein had a nuclear arms program.

– Associated Press