Reuters World News Highlights 1015 GMT Sept 21
Reuters, 09.21.02, 6:15 AM ET
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RAMALLAH, West Bank - The Israeli army demolished parts of
the building where Yasser Arafat was trapped and under siege
after firing a tank shell that a witness said showered the
Palestinian leader with dust.
Israeli guns that roared overnight fell silent by the
morning and a fire raged through the roof of one of the wrecked
stone buildings in a dusty compound that has been turned into a
wasteland by thundering explosions and armoured bulldozers.
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KUWAIT - The top U.S. officer in the region said his troops
were prepared for action against Iraq if President George W.
Bush decided to go to war.
"We are prepared to undertake whatever activities we might
be directed to take by our nation," U.S. Army General Tommy
Franks told a news conference in Kuwait.
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LONDON - Britain's dossier on President Saddam Hussein will
set out clearly the danger he poses to the world but will not
seek to link the Iraqi leader to the militant al Qaeda network,
a British official said.
The dossier of evidence against Iraq would draw extensively
on intelligence sources to lay out the threat from Saddam's
alleged attempts to retain chemical, biological or nuclear
weapons programmes in defiance of the United Nations, the
official said.
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SRINAGAR, India - Suspected rebels attacked a minister twice
and killed two members of India's main communist party in
Kashmir as violence spiralled ahead of the next round of a state
poll, police said.
A police spokesman said a Communist Party of India (Marxist)
activist was also wounded when militants barged into a house and
opened fire overnight in Kulgam area in Kashmir, which is at the
centre of a military stand-off between India and Pakistan.
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ISLAMABAD - Pakistan's interior minister said there was no
conclusive evidence of al Qaeda involvement in bloody attacks on
Western targets this year and suggested bitter rival India may
have financed them.
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KABUL - Afghan security forces have rounded up about 400
people in the southwestern province of Helmand after a convoy
carrying the provincial intelligence chief came under fire, a
senior local official said.
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SANAA - Yemen is holding four Yemeni men on suspicion of
links to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network following a shootout
between the suspects and security forces, a security official
said.
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BERLIN - Controversy over a German minister's alleged
comparison of the U.S. president's methods to those of Adolf
Hitler overshadowed the final day before an election in Germany
that promises a photo-finish.
Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin has denied a
newspaper report she had likened George W. Bush's stance on
Iraq to Hitler's use of foreign policy to hide domestic woes.
Yet she still faces calls to quit and charges from Bush's
national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that U.S-German
relations have been "poisoned".
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BRATISLAVA - Slovaks began a second day of voting to
determine whether their eastern European country stays on a path
towards Western integration or heads into an uncertain period of
isolation. Polls opened on Saturday at 7 a.m. (0500 GMT).
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ABIDJAN - Rebel troops attacked pockets of loyalist soldiers
in northern Ivory Coast as the West African country's army
mobilised to try to regain the initiative. President Laurent
Gbagbo promised all out war on his enemies after rushing back
from Rome to a country in crisis after what the government said
was a failed coup on Thursday.
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SEOUL - North Korea said six lawmakers from rival South
Korea held a meeting with Kim Yong-nam, president of the
Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly in the North's
capital, Pyongyang. South Korea's Yonhap News Agency said it was
the first meeting among assemblymen from the two countries since
the 1950-53 Korean war.
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MOSCOW - At least 40 people were missing after a powerful
mudslide swept through a mountainous tourist region in southern
Russia, Emergency Ministry officials said.
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SLAWI, Indonesia - Ten people were killed and 15 wounded in
an explosion at a fireworks factory in the town of Slawi in
Indonesia's Central Java province, police and hospital officials
said.
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OSAKA, Japan - Top world oil exporter Saudi Arabia hit back
at critics questioning its role as a reliable source of crude
and moved to calm consumer fears of supply disruption in the
event of Middle East conflict.
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Copyright 2002, Reuters News Service
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