WESTERN EUROPE

SPAIN’S AL QAEDA LEADER JAILED OVER 9/11

MADRID, Spain – The head of an Al Qaeda cell in Spain was jailed for 27 years yesterday for his role in the September 11, 2001, attacks in America. Imad Yarkas, alias Abu Dahdah, one of 24 defendants on trial in Madrid, was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder in the attacks and of heading a terrorist organization. The verdict made him the only person with a standing conviction of links to the attacks on New York and Washington. A Syrian-born Spaniard, Yarkas, 42, had faced a Spanish record jail term of nearly 75,000 years – 25 years for each of the 2,973 people killed in the attacks – had he been convicted of killing them. He was cleared of this.

– The Daily Telegraph

BLAIR REFUSES TO BE RUSHED FROM NO. 10

LONDON – Prime Minister Blair will defy pressure today from Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, and the country’s deputy prime minister, John Prescott, to set a date for his early departure from Downing Street. The chancellor assumed the role of prime minister-in-waiting at the Labour Party conference yesterday in a speech seen as putting Mr. Blair on a year’s notice to hand over power.

Downing Street was unsettled by the bold manner in which Mr. Brown called on Mr. Blair to make way. It wrecked a carefully orchestrated attempt by ministers to suggest that while Mr. Brown was the obvious successor, he would have to wait until 2008. Officials said later that Mr. Blair would use his conference address to show he was determined to stay on to ensure that his radical reforms of the public services were carried out.

– The Daily Telegraph

BERLUSCONI CLEARED OF FALSE BOOKKEEPING CHARGES

ROME – Premier Berlusconi was cleared yesterday of charges of false bookkeeping in a case involving funding for the former Socialist Party. Lawyer Nicolo Ghedini told the Associated Press that a Milan court cleared Mr. Berlusconi because, under revised Italian penal law, false bookkeeping has been decriminalized.

Prosecutors had accused Mr. Berlusconi of funneling money through holding company All Iberian to fund the Socialist Party of a former Italian premier, Bettino Craxi, and of false bookkeeping to cover up the transfers. Italian law was changed a few years ago, when Mr. Berlusconi’s majority in Parliament pushed through a measure to generally decriminalize false bookkeeping.

– Associated Press

EASTERN EUROPE

TWIN BROTHERS COULD BECOME POLAND’S DOMINANT POLITICAL FORCE

WARSAW, Poland – Identical twin brothers could soon become the dominant political force in Poland after Sunday’s general elections, in which the center-right won power from the ruling left. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, older than Lech by 45 minutes and the president of the victorious Law and Justice Party, is in line to become the next prime minister. His brother is one of the front-runners in the race for the presidency.

If the 56-year-old twins do claim Poland’s two highest seats of office it would be a remarkable conclusion to an odyssey that began in 1962 when they first came to the public eye in the film “The Two Who Stole the Moon.” They then went to the same school and both studied law at Warsaw University before rising to prominence in the Solidarity trade union.

– The Daily Telegraph

PERSIAN GULF

IRANIANS CRITICIZE IAEA DECISION

VIENNA, Austria – Iran’s vice president yesterday blasted the “absurdity” of moves toward referring his country to the U.N. Security Council for its nuclear activities but stopped short of announcing that Tehran had retaliated by resuming uranium conversion.

American and British representatives at a 139-nation meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency asserted that only Iran – and its disregard for international concerns about its nuclear program – was to blame for a weekend decision that clears the path for hauling Tehran before the Security Council as early as next month.

– Associated Press