CENTRAL ASIA

AFGHAN AGENTS THWART PLOT TO ASSASSINATE U.S. AMBASSADOR

KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghan intelligence agents scuttled a plot to assassinate the outspoken American Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, swooping down on a station wagon carrying three Pakistanis armed with Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades, officials said yesterday. The arrests came days after President Karzai and American officials warned that foreign fighters were slipping into Afghanistan to cause mayhem ahead of parliamentary elections. The men were arrested Sunday in the Qarghayi district of northeastern Laghman province, just 150 feet from where Mr. Khalilzad had planned to inaugurate a road with Afghanistan’s interior minister, two senior Afghan officials told the AP. The officials said agents were lying in wait after intelligence forces were tipped off about the plot in advance. Mr. Khalilzad, who is to be the next American ambassador in Iraq, canceled his appearance at the last minute and was never in danger.

– Associated Press

MIDDLE EAST

SHARON, ABBAS MEET AS VIOLENCE SPIKES

JERUSALEM – Ariel Sharon will demand a crackdown on militants and Mahmoud Abbas will push for wide-ranging moves to ease the burdens of occupation when the leaders meet today for their first summit since declaring a truce in February. The session comes amid a spike in violence and fears that a historic window of opportunity for peace, after 4 1/2 years of fighting, is rapidly closing. Mr. Sharon’s plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements this summer was expected to dominate the agenda. The bigger issues of peace and statehood are likely to remain on hold until after Israel completes its evacuation, though Palestinian Arabs want assurances the withdrawal will be followed by further pullbacks in the West Bank.

– Associated Press

PERSIAN GULF

RUNOFF ELECTION SHAPES UP AS SLUGFEST

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran’s first runoff race for president was shaping up as a slugfest yesterday as reformists lined up behind a front-running pragmatic statesman and Islamic clerics who back Tehran’s hard-line mayor halted publication of a liberal newspaper.

Following complaints of fraud in Friday’s first round, the supervisory Guardian Council agreed to a re-count of a random sample of 80 ballot boxes from the provinces of Tehran, Qom, Mashhad, and Isfahan – a tiny portion of Iran’s 42,000 polling stations. But state TV reported yesterday that the council pronounced the results final, launching the two leading vote-getters on the hustings for the runoff ballot this Friday. Moderate parties and liberal students offered support to Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president who has veered between the strict religious and reformist camps during his career. Reformers said they had to defeat his opponent, the unabashedly hard-line Tehran mayor, Mahdi Ahmadinejad.

– Associated Press

WESTERN EUROPE

STONEHENGE PILGRIMAGES MAY HAVE BEEN FOR WINTER SOLSTICE

Modern-day druids, hippies, and revelers who turn up at Stonehenge to celebrate the summer solstice may not be marking an ancient festival, as they believe.

The latest archaeological findings add weight to growing evidence that our ancestors visited Stonehenge to celebrate the winter solstice. Analysis of pigs’ teeth found at Durrington Walls, a ceremonial site of wooden post circles near Stonehenge on the River Avon, has shown that most pigs were less than a year old when slaughtered. Dr. Umburto Albarella, an animal bone expert at the University of Sheffield’s archaeology department, which is studying monuments around Stonehenge, said pigs in the Neolithic period were born in spring and were an early form of domestic pig that farrowed once a year.

– The Daily Telegraph