Foreign Desk

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun
NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

SOUTH AMERICA


NEW YORKER’S FATHER SWORN IN AS PERUVIAN PRIME MINSTER


President Toledo swore in a new Cabinet in Peru yesterday, with Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, stepping up as prime minister of the country, according to the Associated Press. His predecessor, Prime Minister Ferrero, resigned in protest when Mr. Toledo appointed a new foreign minister, Oscar Maurtua, to replace Fernando Olivera, the AP reported.


Prior to his appointment as prime minister, Mr. Kuczynski, 66, served as Peru’s finance minister, a position he has held twice, beginning in 2001 and 2004, and which he has used to bring the country to the attention of international capital markets by issuing its first global bond in more than 70 years and its first euro-denominated debt ever, according to Reuters. Before entering politics, the new Oxford- and Princeton-educated prime minister ran a Miami-based investment fund, put in time at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Peruvian Energy and Mines Ministry, Reuters said. He is widely considered to be a contender for the Peruvian presidency.


Mr. Kuczynski is also the father of a New York Times style reporter, Alex Kuczynski, 37, of New York, who is profiled in the September issue of W magazine as a blond, Park Avenue-dwelling jet-setter. She recently took a leave from the newspaper to pen her first book, “Beauty Junkies: Inside Our $15 Billion Obsession With Cosmetic Surgery” (Doubleday), which will be released later this year, the W story said.


Mr. Kuczynski was replaced as finance minister by his top deputy, Fernando Zavala, the AP said.


– Staff Reporter of the Sun


CENTRAL ASIA


AFGHAN CHOPPER CRASH KILLS 17 SPANISH TROOPS


KABUL, Afghanistan – A helicopter carrying NATO peacekeepers crashed in a western Afghan desert yesterday and another flying with it made an emergency landing, killing 17 Spanish troops and injuring five others providing security ahead of landmark legislative elections.


There were conflicting reports about what caused the crash, the biggest loss of life for NATO forces in Afghanistan. A spokesman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force said the crash and emergency landing in Herat province were believed to be accidents, but Spain’s defense minister, Jose Bono, said he did not rule out hostile fire. Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, said the crash was caused by a sandstorm. However, an Afghan army commander, Abdul Wahab Walizada, whose troops provided security at the crash site, said the weather was fine. He said the helicopters were flying too close together, and the rotor blades of one clipped the other.


– Associated Press


WESTERN EUROPE


VATICAN LAWYERS ASK FOR IMMUNITY FOR POPE


VATICAN CITY – Lawyers for Pope Benedict XVI have asked President Bush to declare the pontiff immune from liability in a lawsuit that accuses him of conspiring to cover up the molestation of three boys by a seminarian in Texas, court records show.


The Vatican’s embassy in Washington sent a diplomatic memo to the State Department on May 20 requesting the American government grant the pope immunity because he is a head of state, according to a May 26 motion submitted by the pope’s lawyers in U.S. District Court for the Southern Division of Texas in Houston. Joseph Ratzinger is named as a defendant in the civil lawsuit. Now Benedict XVI, he’s accused of conspiring with the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston to cover up the abuse during the mid-1990s. The suit is seeking unspecified monetary damages. In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Gerry Keener, said yesterday that the pope already is considered a head of state and automatically has diplomatic immunity.


– Associated Press


EASTERN EUROPE


BULGARIAN PARLIAMENT APPROVES SOCIALIST PRIME MINISTER


SOFIA, Bulgaria – Bulgaria’s Parliament overwhelmingly approved the leader of the Socialist Party as the country’s new prime minister yesterday, bringing to power his socialist-liberal coalition government.


Lawmakers voted 168-67 to elect a 39-year-old historian, Sergei Stanishev, to head the Cabinet that will lead the country into the European Union. In a separate, 169-68 vote, they approved the cabinet, drawn up in a coalition of Mr. Stanishev’s Socialists, the National Movement Simeon II, his predecessor Simeon Saxcoburggotski’s party, and a mainly ethnic Turkish party, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms.


– Associated Press

NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.


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