PERSIAN GULF

GUNMEN KIDNAP TWO GERMANS IN NORTHERN IRAQ

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Armed men wearing military fatigues seized two German engineers from a car in northern Iraq yesterday in the latest brazen kidnapping to push a foreign government into another desperate race to free its nationals. Efforts continued to rescue Jill Carroll, the American freelance reporter kidnapped January 7 in Baghdad. Ms. Carroll’s appearance last week on a silent videotape aired on ArabTV marked the only sign of her since her abduction.

In other developments, hundreds of Shiite Muslims in the southern city of Basra demanded that British troops free Iraqi policemen arrested yesterday in connection with multiple militia-linked assassinations; about 1,000 Sunni Arabs marched through the northern city of Samarra to condemn the execution-style killings of 31 Sunnis abducted after being rejected from a police academy, and the American military said four American military personnel were killed in separate incidents on Monday.

– Associated Press

SESSION OF SADDAM TRIAL CANCELED, DELAYED UNTIL SUNDAY

BAGHDAD, Iraq – The resumption of Saddam Hussein’s trial was abruptly canceled Tuesday and postponed for five days in the latest turmoil to plague the court, as some on the panel hearing the case resisted a last-minute shake-up that brought in a new chief judge. Saddam’s lawyers said the confusion showed the court could not give the ousted Iraqi leader a fair trial and was under too much political pressure.

“There’s too much violence in the country, there’s too much division and too much pressure on the court,” former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who is on Saddam’s defense team, told CNN. “The project ought to be abandoned. It was a creature of the United States in the first place.”

– Associated Press

WESTERN EUROPE

INVESTIGATOR: U.S. ‘OUTSOURCED’ TORTURE – AND EUROPEANS KNEW

STRASBOURG, France – America has developed a system for “outsourcing” torture, the head of a European inquiry into alleged CIA secret prisons said yesterday, accusing European governments of turning a blind eye to breaches of human rights. Swiss senator Dick Marty’s report failed to uncover tangible evidence proving clandestine detention centers existed in Romania or Poland as alleged by the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

– Associated Press

EAST ASIA

U.S. INCREASES PRESSURE ON N. KOREA

SEOUL, South Korea – America demanded yesterday that South Korea join efforts to curb North Korea’s alleged counterfeiting and money laundering activities, despite the North’s threat to boycott nuclear talks if American sanctions are not lifted. In another move expected to anger Pyongyang, South Korea announced it would partially cooperate with a American-led international drive to block trafficking in weapons of mass destruction. Pyongyang believes Washington’s Proliferation Security Initiative is aimed against the North.

– Associated Press

PRESIDENT HU TO MAKE FIRST OFFICIAL VISIT TO AMERICA

BEIJING – President Hu will make his first official visit to Washington in April, and his premier told a visiting American official that Beijing wanted to improve communication with Washington. Visiting Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick and the Chinese Foreign Ministry both confirmed Mr. Hu’s upcoming trip to America, which comes at a time of tensions between the two countries over trade, China’s military buildup, and its human rights record.

– Associated Press

CARIBBEAN

CASTRO ACCUSES U.S. OF PLANNING TO RELEASE POSADA

HAVANA – Fidel Castro accused America yesterday of planning to free a man he has characterized as the Western Hemisphere’s worst terrorist, directing a march of tens of thousands of people who equated President Bush with Adolf Hitler. The government-organized march past the American mission in Havana was timed to coincide with the end of a 90-day detention period yesterday for an anti-Castro militant held at an American federal detention center in Texas on immigration charges, Luis Posada Carriles.

– Associated Press