EAST ASIA

AMERICAN NAVY TO FIND AIRSTRIP REPLACEMENT IN JAPAN

TOKYO – Japan and America have agreed to pick a new night-landing practice facility by 2009 for the American Navy’s carrier-borne aircraft stationed in Japan, news reports said yesterday. The agreement to set a deadline on finding a replacement for an airstrip on remote Iwo Jima island came during last week’s round of talks on realigning American troops in Japan, the Yomiuri newspaper and Kyodo News agency reported. American negotiators also requested that a new site be found in western Japan near the Marine Corps’ Iwakuni Air Station, the Yomiuri said.

The Navy’s carrier air wing, now stationed at Atsugi Naval Air Station near Tokyo, is slated to be moved to Iwakuni – 450 miles southwest of Tokyo – under a realignment plan agreed on last October. Iwo Jima is about 700 miles southeast of Tokyo.

A Defense Agency spokesman, speaking anonymously due to agency protocol, denied the reports and said no decision has been reached on when to relocate the facility, or to where. An American Navy spokesman, John Nylander, also denied the Yomiuri and Kyodo reports. But he said the Navy wants a replacement closer to mainland Japan than the Iwo Jima facility.

– Associated Press

PERSIAN GULF

IRAN ELECTED AS U.N. DISARMAMENT COMMISSION VICE CHAIRMAN

UNITED NATIONS – Iran, which currently is under close scrutiny from the U.N. Security Council for developing a nuclear weapons capability, has been elected to the vice chairmanship of the U.N. Disarmament Commission, whose purpose includes halting the spread of nuclear weapons, Cybercast News Service reported.

Iran joins Uruguay and Chile as one of eight vice chairmen and will hold the post for a year. A former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Dore Gold, told C.N.S. that electing Iran to such a position was like asking the “cat to guard the milk.”

The commission’s Web site said its agenda includes recommending ways to achieve nuclear disarmament, nonproliferation, and “practical confidence-building measures in the field of conventional weapons.”

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

SADDAM’S SIGNATURE ON DUJAIL DOCUMENTS AUTHENTIC

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Experts confirmed the authenticity of Saddam Hussein’s signature on documents connected to a crackdown on Shiites in the 1980s, prosecutors said yesterday in a new session of the trial of the former Iraqi leader and seven co-defendants. The report from handwriting experts said a signature on a document approving rewards for intelligence agents involved in the crackdown was Saddam’s, prosecutors said, reading from the report.

In an earlier session, Saddam had refused to confirm or deny his signature. The defense immediately disputed the experts’ results and insisted the documents be analyzed by other experts not affiliated with the Iraqi Interior Ministry.

After hearing the report, the judge adjourned the court until tomorrow to give the experts time to look at more documents.

– Associated Press

NORTH AMERICA

60 KILLED WHEN BUS SLIDES OFF MEXICO CLIFF

VERACRUZ, Mexico – A bus carrying Mexican tourists plunged off a 650-foot cliff yesterday, killing at least 60 people in a crash police said could have been caused by brake failure on the steep mountainous roads. Three people were injured, and authorities said the number of dead could increase as rescuers search for more bodies.

Police did not immediately know what caused the wreck, but were investigating whether the driver was going too fast or whether the bus’s brakes failed as it was descending one of the many winding roads in the area, Ranulfo Marquez Hernandez, the deputy secretary of civil protection for Veracruz state, where the crash occurred, said.

Federal Preventive Police official Arturo Corona told W Radio that the bus was traveling about as fast as 70 mph. Buses often are required to operate at speeds as low as 60 mph. He said a preliminary investigation indicated that the bus’s higher-than-normal speed may have been caused by brake failure.

– Associated Press