WORLD IN BRIEF

Car Bombing in Madrid, Blamed on ETA, Injures 52

MADRID -- A powerful car bombing injured 52 people during rush hour Wednesday in Madrid, authorities said, in the sixth attack blamed on the Basque separatist group ETA since Spain's prime minister offered to negotiate if it renounced violence.

An anonymous warning on behalf of ETA to a pro-independence Basque newspaper preceded the morning bombing in an area of office buildings and shops in a working-class neighborhood in the capital, officials said. Police had time to cordon off the area before the blast.

The explosion shattered windows and damaged building facades and cars, but no one was critically wounded; only five of the 52 injured were hospitalized.

Some members of the opposition seized on the explosion as evidence that ETA has no interest in negotiating a settlement to a decades-old conflict, which has claimed more than 800 lives, and said Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's overture to the group was wrong.

THE MIDDLE EAST

· BINT JBEIL, Lebanon -- Under international pressure to disarm, the leader of Hezbollah vowed to fight anyone who tried to take away the radical Muslim group's weapons, which he said included more than 12,000 rockets capable of hitting northern Israel.

Addressing tens of thousands of supporters in his southern Lebanese stronghold near the Israeli border, Hassan Nasrallah stressed that the guerrillas' weapons were necessary for Lebanon's defense and rejected talk of their removal.

ASIA

· KABUL, Afghanistan -- The Afghan government said it was in contact with the kidnappers of an Italian aid worker and was optimistic about those contacts. An Interior Ministry statement said the government was "working tirelessly" to secure the release of CARE International's Clementina Cantoni, abducted May 16.

· HONG KONG -- Hong Kong's acting leader resigned to campaign for the city's top job shortly after lawmakers passed a controversial amendment to an election law that clears the way for the July 10 vote.

Donald Tsang, the front-runner in the race, had refused to announce his candidacy until lawmakers revised the election law, cutting the next leader's term to two years.

EUROPE

· ROME -- A judge has ordered a best-selling writer and journalist to stand trial in her native Italy on charges she defamed Islam in a recent book.

The decision angered Italy's justice minister but delighted Muslim activists, who accused Oriana Fallaci of inciting religious hatred in her 2004 work "La Forza della Ragione" (The Force of Reason).

Fallaci, who lives in New York, said she had no intention of returning to Italy for trial.

THE AMERICAS

· LA PAZ, Bolivia -- The head of Bolivia's armed forces denied that the military was preparing for a coup, as the government vowed to prosecute two officers who called for the ouster of President Carlos Mesa.

-- From News Services