World briefs
www.northjersey.com Wednesday, January 22, 2003
SEOUL, South Korea - The chief North Korean delegate to talks with South Korea hinted Tuesday he was unwilling to discuss an issue of vital concern to his hosts and their allies: North Korea's suspected nuclear weapons program.
The comments by Kim Ryong Song, the North Korean delegate, raised doubts about whether South Korea would make any headway during the four-day talks in urging the North to drop its nuclear programs.
"Let's not care about the situation surrounding us and concentrate on resolving internal issues," Kim said after arriving with his delegation.
North Korea has argued that the dispute about "the nuclear issue" is with the United States and does not involve South Korea or other nations.
NABLUS, West Bank - Israeli forces staged the biggest demolition in the West Bank in years on Tuesday, destroying 62 shops in a Palestinian village.
Also Tuesday, Israel's Supreme Court relaxed a ban on soldiers using Palestinians as "human shields" or ordering Palestinians to knock on doors of Islamic militants' houses. Human rights advocates denounced the decision.
In Gaza, Palestinians fired rockets at two Jewish settlements, damaging buildings but causing no casualties, settlers and the military said.
In the village of Nazlat Issa, next to the West Bank border with Israel, seven bulldozers guarded by 300 soldiers destroyed shops and market stalls.
In other developments, Israeli police discovered a car carrying a large amount of explosives in the Israeli Arab city of Um el-Fahm, near the line with the West Bank. Three people escaped from the car, which police blew up.
CARACAS, Venezuela - Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jimmy Carter proposed a plan Tuesday to lead Venezuela to elections and end a 51-day-old strike against President Hugo Chavez, which has dramatically cut production in the No. 5 oil-exporting country.
Carter's ideas were the first concrete proposals to emerge from more than two months of talks between the government and Venezuela's opposition, which called the strike to demand early elections or Chavez's resignation.
Both Chavez and opposition leaders reacted cautiously, saying they merited study.
Carter said the first plan would amend Venezuela's constitution to shorten presidential and legislative terms of office and stage early general elections.
It calls for Venezuela's opposition to end the strike and for the government, which has a congressional majority, to move quickly on changing the constitution.
Carter's second plan calls for both sides to prepare for a binding recall referendum on Chavez's presidency in August, the midpoint of Chavez's six-year term. Venezuela's constitution allows such a vote.
BERLIN - Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder failed to win a clean victory Tuesday in his legal fight to quash German media rumors that his marriage is on the rocks.
Schroeder's lawyer vowed to take the case to a trial after a mixed ruling by a Berlin court, which upheld a ban on a newspaper correspondent repeating the speculation but lifted a gag order on one of the newspapers he writes for.
The hearing was the latest development in the image-conscious chancellor's efforts to keep the press out of his private life, just as his popularity sags with the German economy.
After legal action last year to silence reports that he dyes his hair, Schroeder obtained injunctions against two regional newspapers not to repeat their reports in early December of rumored problems with his fourth wife, Doris Schroeder-Koepf.
- From news service reports