Security Council votes to send peacekeepers
SUDAN
UNITED NATIONS -- After weeks of negotiations, the UN Security Council unanimously voted yesterday to send 10,700 peacekeepers to Sudan. Separately, a UN report on sexual abuses by peacekeepers describes the UN military arm as deeply flawed and recommends withholding salaries of the guilty and requiring nations to pursue legal action against perpetrators. A10.
GUATEMALA
US ends 15-year freeze on military assistance
GUATEMALA CITY -- The United States released $3.2 million in aid to Guatemala's military yesterday, ending a 15-year freeze on the assistance in a largely symbolic recognition that the Central American nation has made progress reforming an army tainted by past human rights abuses. The money was freed up after this nation of 14 million agreed to make its military subject to civilian courts, establish an office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and remove legal impediments in Guatemala to UN investigations of human rights abuses. (Los Angeles Times)
LIBYA
Dissident's health is poor, rights group says
CAIRO -- A dissident imprisoned in Libya for more than a year without charges is suffering from heart disease and other maladies that could prove fatal if he is not treated, international doctors who visited the man said yesterday. A delegation from Physicians for Human Rights, which is based in Cambridge, Mass., met in prison with Fathi el-Jahmi, 63, an outspoken opponent of Moammar Khadafy's government -- the first such visit since Jahmi was detained in March 2004. (AP)
CHILE
Immunity for Pinochet is restored in ruling
SANTIAGO -- The Supreme Court yesterday reversed a lower court ruling that would have stripped former dictator Augusto Pinochet of immunity from prosecution in the 1974 car bombing assassination of political foe General Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires, a court official said. Pinochet, 89, has been accused in almost 300 human rights cases related to the thousands of killings and tortures during his 1973-90 regime, when the military repressed leftists and opposition movements. The Supreme Court struck down the Santiago Appeals Court's earlier ruling to strip Pinochet of immunity in the Prats case because the same appeals court had already refused an Argentine judge's request to have his immunity removed so that he could be prosecuted there. (Reuters)
IRAN
Secret uranium facility is alleged by exile
VIENNA -- Iranian engineers have built a secret underground storage area for use as a uranium enrichment facility in a restricted military area of interest to the UN nuclear watchdog agency, an Iranian exile said yesterday. Alireza Jafarzadeh said by telephone from Washington that the ''camouflaged tunnel-like facility" was completed recently at Parchin, a sprawling Iranian military complex about 20 miles southeast of Tehran. An Iranian official who asked to remain anonymous dismissed the allegation as ''ridiculous," and a senior diplomat familiar with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN watchdog, said the IAEA was unaware of such developments. (AP)
WEST BANK
Palestinians ask US to help curb settlement
RAMALLAH -- Palestinian officials yesterday asked two US envoys to help block the expansion of the largest Jewish settlement in the West Bank, saying it endangers peace prospects and isolates east Jerusalem, the Palestinians' intended capital. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the envoys expressed opposition to the plan to build 3,500 housing units around Maaleh Adumim, 3 miles east of Jerusalem, filling in the last piece of empty land. (AP)
