WESTERN EUROPE

RUSSIA BACKS IRAN IN NUCLEAR DISPUTE

VIENNA, Austria – Russia put up a defensive wall around Iran yesterday, saying no action should be taken over actions that Western countries fear amount to a covert attempt by Teheran to make an atomic bomb. The move could derail a move by Britain, France, and Russia to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council over its refusal to come clean about key aspects of its nuclear program. As America, Canada, Australia, and Japan threw their weight behind the diplomatic campaign, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said the move would be “counterproductive.” His position threatens to split the governing council of the International Atomic Energy Agency into a confrontation of “the West versus the rest.”

– The Daily Telegraph

E.C. CHIEF TO SCRAP ‘ABSURD’ E.U. RULES

BRUSSELS, Belgium -The head of the European Commission vowed yesterday to hold a bonfire of “absurd” E.U. directives and rules, saying that Brussels should not be a “bureaucratic monster.” Jose Manuel Barroso declared that crafting “better regulation” was one of the central themes of a strategy meeting this week of all 25 European commissioners.

Next week, the commissioner for enterprise and industry, Gunter Verheugen, will present his colleagues with a list of 69 pending legislative proposals that are to be scrapped before they reach the statute books, after a review of more than 200 draft measures. Those for the ax include one to regulate exposure to sunlight – a proposal that became a “joke,” in the words of Mr. Barroso, after allegations that it would outlaw bare-chested builders or force Bavarian barmaids to wear high-collared shirts. Some of the laws are not absurd, officials said, but were drafted without a proper assessment of their economic impact.

– The Daily Telegraph

BRITAIN: IRA MUST DELIVER ON PROMISE OF DISARMAMENT

BELFAST, Northern Ireland – The Irish Republican Army must deliver on its July 28 promises to disarm and cease all threatening activities, Britain’s Northern Ireland minister said yesterday in his first major speech on the peace process. Peter Hain, who was appointed Northern Ireland secretary in May, said widespread Protestant rioting earlier this month was fueled, in part, by fears about the province’s Good Friday peace accord of 1998.The complex deal proposed a list of goals, including disarmament of the IRA by mid 2000.

– Associated Press

TEENAGER SENTENCED IN BRITAIN FOR CRYING ‘BOMB’ AT TUBE STATION

LONDON – A Muslim teen who frightened passengers at a London tube station by shouting “Bomb, bomb,” although he was neither carrying nor saw any explosive materials, was sentenced to eight months in a young offenders’ institution yesterday, according to a British wire service, Press Association. Policemen arrested the 18-year-old Nasir Ali and a group of younger friends after they ignored warnings to behave. Whether the other teenagers will be tried or sentenced was not clear from the Press Association report. The incident occurred on Friday, July 7, less than 36 hours after suicide bombers killed 52 people on the London public transport system.

– Special to the Sun

EAST ASIA

NORTH KOREA ACCUSES U.S. OF PLANNING NUCLEAR ATTACK

SEOUL, South Korea – In a second day of bluster after its disarmament accord, North Korea accused America yesterday of planning a nuclear attack and warned it could retaliate. North Korea “is fully ready to decisively control a pre-emptive nuclear attack with a strong retaliatory blow,” the communist nation’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in an English-language commentary carried by the state Korean Central News Agency.

At six-nation talks in Beijing on Monday, North Korea promised to give up its nuclear weapons program in return for economic aid and security assurances. Since then, however, the North’s rhetoric has underscored its unpredictability and cast doubt on its commitment to the accord hammered out with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and America after four rounds of contentious negotiations stretching over two years.

– Associated Press

SOUTHEAST ASIA

INDONESIA FACES RISK OF BIRD FLU EPIDEMIC JAKARTA, Indonesia – A bird flu outbreak that has killed at least four people in Indonesia could quickly turn into an epidemic, the health minister warned, as another two children with symptoms of the disease died yesterday. The government scrambled to calm public fears after the deaths of the two girls, ages 5 and 2.

If lab tests confirm they died from bird flu, it would raise the disease’s toll here since July to six. Nine others suspected of having the virus were being treated yesterday at Jakarta’s infectious diseases hospital. Agriculture officials announced plans for mass culls of chickens in infected areas.

– Associated Press

SOUTH ASIA

FLOODS KILL AT LE AST 56 IN INDIA, THOUSANDS EVACUATED

HYDERABAD, India – Heavy downpours sent rivers over their embankments, killing at least 56 people and forcing the evacuation of thousands in southwest India, officials said yesterday. Helicopters plucked people from danger in the worst hit areas of Andhra Pradesh state and delivered thousands of tons of food, medicine, and blankets to camps for the displaced. Relief workers evacuated more than 140,000 residents of low-lying villages to 465 relief camps set up in government buildings and schools located on higher ground.

– Associated Press

FAMILY ARGUES OVER RAHUL GANDHI’S HISPANIC FIANCEE

NEW DELHI – The vexed issue of marrying outside Indian society is returning to haunt the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that has ruled India for much of the post-independence era.

Last year Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of the assassinated former prime minister, Rajiv, discovered the limitations imposed by her “foreign origins” and turned down the chance to be prime minister. Now the dynasty’s next generation, Rahul Gandhi, 34, is reported to be at loggerheads with his family over plans to marry the Hispanic girlfriend he fell in love with seven years ago while studying at Cambridge.

Rahul is being groomed as the next leader of the Congress Party after his election last year to the safe family seat of Amethi. Many pundits believe that Rahul will become India’s next prime minister. However, the issue of marriage is looming large. India’s gossip columnists report that Rahul is adamant that he will marry his “Colombian-born” girlfriend.

– The Daily Telegraph

MIDDLE EAST

TURKISH CITY CRACKS DOWN ON ALCOHOL SALES

DENIZLI, Turkey – Denizli’s leather-tanning district seems an unlikely spot to open a bar. But this is where bar owners in the Turkish city are being ordered to move their businesses. Under a plan introduced by municipal authorities acting on a directive by the interior ministry in Ankara, the city’s residential areas are to be purged of establishments serving alcohol.

A prosperous city of 250,000, Denizli does not seem a probable staging ground for Sharia. But the city council is dominated by members of the ruling Justice and Development Party. A former Islamist and founder of the party, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, rose to power three years ago saying he no longer believed in mixing religion with politics.

– The Daily Telegraph

NORTH AFRICA

SUDANESE ARMY BATTLES REBELS, INFLICTS ‘HEAVY CASUALTIES’

KHARTOUM, Sudan – Sudanese soldiers inflicted “heavy casualties” in driving off rebels who overran a town in the troubled Darfur region, the military said yesterday. A U.N. official, George Somerwill, said the world body also heard from the region that Sudan Liberation Army fighters retreated late Tuesday from the area around Sheiria, a town of 33,000 people in southern Darfur. Several hundred rebels captured the town Monday, violating a truce reached in December for Sudan’s vast western region.

– Associated Press

SOUTHERN AFRICA

MUGABE STRIKES FINAL BLOW AGAINST WHITE FARMERS

HARARE, Zimbabwe – After years of resisting President Mugabe’s violent campaign to rid Zimbabwe of white farmers, David Wilding-Davies believed he had survived the ethnic purge. He was wrong. In what looks like the start of the final clearance of Zimbabwe’s remaining white farmers, Mr. Mugabe’s security forces launched a dawn raid yesterday, discharging volleys of automatic fire against Mr. Wilding-Davies, his white farm manager, and a neighbor.

The operation followed Mr. Mugabe’s alteration of the constitution last month, for the 17th time since independence from Britain in 1980, to nationalize all white owned land and prevent white farmers from going to court to challenge seizure of about 22 million acres of their land, which is now state property. About 3,500, or 90%, of white commercial farmers have been forced out by Mr. Mugabe and his cronies since 2000.

– The Daily Telegraph