Note ties 2d beheading to deaths of Muslims

BANGKOK -- Suspected Islamic militants beheaded a Buddhist laborer in Thailand's tumultuous south, police said yesterday, the second such killing in retaliation for the deaths of 85 Muslims at the hands of security forces last month. The attackers left notes with the body of 60-year-old man threatening further revenge attacks. An analyst warned that the gruesome nature of the killing signaled that violence in the region had reached a new level of brutality. At least 85 Muslim protesters died on Oct. 25 when security forces cracked down on a violent demonstration outside a police station in Narathiwat's

Tak Bai district. Most of the victims suffocated or were crushed after they were arrested and crammed into army trucks. (AP)

AUSTRIA

US skeptical of talks between Europe, Iran

VIENNA -- The United States doubts Iran's good faith in talks with three European powers trying to persuade Tehran to suspend activities that can help make nuclear arms, a senior US official said yesterday. Following a round of talks with negotiators from France, Germany, and Britain over the weekend in Paris, diplomats have said they expect Iran to announce this week a full suspension of activities that can be used to make nuclear arms. "We are very skeptical of Iran's long-term intentions, and we do not expect Iran to comply over the long term with any commitment not to develop nuclear weapons," Stephen G. Rademaker, an assistant US secretary of state for arms control, told reporters in Vienna. (AP)

PERU

Court bans cameras at trial of rebel chief

LIMA -- The Peruvian court retrying Shining Path founder Abimael Guzman on terrorism charges has banned cameras from future hearings after he and other rebel leaders raised their fists and shouted communist slogans at the opening session. "For the next session, video and photographic cameras will no longer be allowed in," Pablo Talavera, head of the National Terrorism Court, told CPN radio yesterday. Guzman, 69, who led a fanatical "popular war" to impose communism in the heart of the Andes until his capture in 1992, used his first public appearance in 12 years Friday to make a mockery of Peru's legal system. (Reuters)

RUSSIA

Protesters ransack provincial offices

ROSTOV-ON-DON -- Hundreds of protesters ransacked and occupied the regional administration building in a southern Russia province yesterday, demanding the resignation of the region's president, whose former son-in-law has been linked to a multiple slaying. Hundreds of armed riot police were standing guard outside the office of regional President Mustafa Batdyev, a duty officer for the Karachayevo-Cherkessiya regional Interior Ministry said. The protesters got into the building by battering down the doors with metal barriers. Television footage showed men and women inside breaking windows, pulling down curtains and window frames and throwing papers and potted plants out the windows as uniformed police fled. (AP)

AFGHANISTAN

Karzai says terrorism has been banished

NEW YORK -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai said yesterday that his country had banished terrorism, even as Taliban-linked militants held three UN hostages and threatened to kill them. Karzai told CNN in an interview that his government was working around the clock to free the hostages whose kidnappings had so angered ordinary Afghans that some even offered to trade places with the foreign captives. The newly elected president said he was not concerned about the spillover of "copycat terrorism" from Iraq. "In my opinion, and also in the opinion of many, many Afghans, events in Afghanistan have proven that terrorism has no place in here, that it's defeated, that it's gone," he said. (AP)