WESTERN EUROPE

BRITISH MUSLIM LEADER WAS DENIED ENTRY TO AMERICA, HE SAYS

LONDON – One of Britain’s most senior Muslim leaders said yesterday that he was denied entry to America without explanation, nearly a week after the deadly subway and bus attacks in London.

Zaki Badawi, head of the Muslim College, told the Associated Press he was denied entry when he arrived in New York on Wednesday. No explanation was given, he said.

He had been invited to speak at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, N.Y., where he planned to give a talk under the title “The Law and Religion in Society.”

A spokeswoman for the Customs and Border Protection office in New York said when Mr. Badawi’s flight from London to John F. Kennedy International Airport landed Wednesday, customs agents had information that showed he was “inadmissible.” Mr. Badawi then voluntarily withdrew his application for entry into the country, the spokeswoman, Janet Rapaport, said.

Ms. Rapaport said privacy rules prevented her from disclosing the specific information that was used to bar Mr. Badawi and said she did not know what database the information came from. She also said she did not know if last week’s terrorist bombings in London had anything to do with barring Mr. Badawi.

– Associated Press

CHANCELLOR HOPEFUL WANTS GERMANS TO BELIEVE IN THEMSELVES AGAIN

Angela Merkel, who is likely to be Germany’s next chancellor, yesterday compared the battles she faced to those fought by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

Mrs. Merkel, who is 50,said she wanted to persuade Germans to believe in themselves again, arguing that, unlike Britons, they suffered from a chronic lack of self-confidence.

“Can Germany belong again to the global winners?” she asked. “I need to believe it can and I vehemently oppose the idea that Germany is excluded from this chance.

“I want Germans to be proud of their country once again. Then I will be happy.”

She strongly indicated that she saw the Britain shaped by the former Conservative prime minister as a role model for Germany and its rising unemployment, powerful unions, and sluggish economic growth.

The Thatcher legacy was definitely something Germany could learn from, according to Mrs. Merkel. “I have great respect for the economic policies of Mrs. Thatcher,” she said. “At the start of her rule, Britain had 75% of the income per capita that Germany had. Today it is 117% of the German level.”

But she tempered her praise by saying: “Mrs. Thatcher did not succeed in everything. For example, I think of the privatization of British Rail.”

– Associated Press

SOUTHEAST ASIA

SUSPECTED ISLAMISTS ATTACK CIVILIANS, ARMY COMMANDER SAYS

BANGKOK, Thailand – Suspected Islamic terrorists set off five bombs and exchanged gunfire with security personnel in an attack yesterday in Muslim-dominated southern Thailand, killing a police officer and wounding 19 other people.

A regional army commander, Lieutenant General Kwanchart Kraharn, said the attacks in the provincial capital, Yala, were well-coordinated and appeared to target civilians.

“The five points where the bombs exploded are places where people go during the night – a hotel, two 7-Elevens, near a restaurant, and near the railway station – all of which are usually crowded with people, so we can say that the troublemakers targeted innocent people,” he told Thai TV Channel 5.

Thailand has been facing an escalating insurgency in its Muslim-dominated southernmost provinces since January 2004. Almost 900 people have died in the sectarian violence in Yala, Pattani, and Narathiwat provinces.

At the start of the attacks yesterday evening, the militants knocked out a power station with a bomb, causing a blackout, a senior officer in a special task force for dealing with violence in the south, Colonel Kitti Intason, said. Electricity was restored to some areas about two hours after the attacks.

– Associated Press

EAST ASIA

NEGOTIATORS PREPARE FOR RENEWED DISCUSSION WITH NORTH KOREA

SEOUL, South Korea – Negotiators from Japan, South Korea, and America met yesterday to coordinate strategy for resuming talks to pressure North Korea to give up its atomic weapons, after the North’s leader reportedly said a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula was his father’s dying wish.

North Korea agreed Saturday to end a 13-month boycott of the six-nation talks after being assured by the chief American nuclear envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, that Washington recognized its sovereignty.

Mr. Hill met yesterday in Seoul with the South’s nuclear negotiator, Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon, and Kenichiro Sasae, director of the Asia and Oceania Bureau at Japan’s Foreign Ministry. They will head their countries’ delegations at the arms talks set to convene the week of July 25. The talks also include China and Russia. The three declined to comment to reporters before heading into a meeting at the South Korean Foreign Ministry.

– Associated Press

EAST AFRICA

DON’T LOSE HOPE, LAURA BUSH URGES RWANDANS

KIGALI, Rwanda – Overlooking this city’s red, dusty hills where thousands were killed, Laura Bush urged Rwandans yesterday not to lose hope as they try to heal the pain – “still so fresh” – of their country’s genocide. She drew a parallel to American history, saying, “We haven’t totally moved on” from slavery 130 years after the Civil War.

“Of course there’s no slavery any more,” she told a group of Rwandan schoolgirls, one of whom had asked her how America dealt with the aftermath of its internal conflict. “But I don’t know that we’ve totally reconciled what it means to our history,” the first lady said. Still, Mrs. Bush sounded an optimistic tone for Rwanda, which is still reeling from the 100 days in 1994 when Hutu militias shot and hacked to death some 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

– Associated Press