WORLD IN BRIEF

Al-Qaeda Said to Be In West Bank, Gaza

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JERUSALEM -- Al-Qaeda has spread to the West Bank and Gaza Strip and its operations there could have dire consequences for the entire region, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said in an interview published Thursday. Israel said it was stepping up its campaign against the terror network.

South Africa, meanwhile, confirmed that it had invited the leaders of Hamas for talks as the radical group prepares to take over the Palestinian parliament, yet another blow to Israel's efforts to isolate the group. No timetable has been set for the visit.

Abbas said Palestinian security forces had not captured any al-Qaeda operatives but had evidence they were in the territories. "We have signs of an al-Qaeda presence in the West Bank and Gaza," he told the London-based al-Hayat newspaper.

He elaborated later during a news conference on the Jordan-West Bank border, saying: "We have information, yet to be confirmed, that al-Qaeda, just as it sends its operatives to Jordan and other countries like Saudi Arabia and others, also might send us operatives for sabotage" acts.

Israel has warned that al-Qaeda was operating in Gaza. Asked to comment on Abbas's remarks, Israel's acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said the country was stepping up its campaign against the group. "We are systematically intensifying our war," he said.

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EUROPE

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· PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro -- Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu asked former guerrilla commander Agim Ceku to form a new government, moving fast to fill the post after the prime minister resigned in the middle of talks with Serbia on Albanians' demand for independence.

The nomination of Ceku, 45, an ethnic Albanian veteran of Kosovo's 1998-99 guerrilla war against Serb forces, made waves in Belgrade, where a four-year-old Serbian arrest warrant accuses him of war crimes against Serbs.

· ROME -- An Italian parliamentary commission has concluded "beyond any reasonable doubt" that the Soviet Union was behind the 1981 shooting of Pope John Paul II, the first time an official body has blamed the Kremlin for the assassination attempt.

The draft report said the pope was considered a threat to the Soviet bloc because of his support for the Solidarity labor movement in his native Poland. It also said Soviet military intelligence -- and not the KGB -- was responsible. Boris Labusov, a Russian Foreign Intelligence Service spokesman, called the accusation "absurd."

The draft has no bearing on any judicial investigations, which have long been closed.

· ZAGREB, Croatia -- Eight former Croatian soldiers were convicted of torturing ethnic Serbs in a wartime prison, four years after they were cleared of the same charges in a trial later annulled for being flawed. A court in Split sentenced the men to six to eight years for the atrocities at the city's Lora military prison during the Serbo-Croat war in 1991.

· MOSCOW -- Jailed Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky won a small victory when a Moscow court ruled that he should be allowed to see his lawyers during working hours at his Siberian prison. Until now, Khodorkovsky, serving an eight-year sentence for fraud and tax evasion, could see his lawyers only in his spare time.

Africa

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· BAIDOA, Somalia -- An American working for UNICEF was released by his kidnappers, the country's prime minister said while promising to investigate a warlord's claim that another U.N. agency owed him money. Robert McCarthy was abducted Wednesday in Afmadow, 260 miles southwest of the capital, Mogadishu.

· JOHANNESBURG -- South Africa's African National Congress powered to victory in Wednesday's local elections, but its triumph was dimmed by the loss of Cape Town, the sparkling tourist city that has come to symbolize the country's raw racial tensions.

ASIA

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· SEOUL -- North Korea demanded an end to South Korea's military exercises with the United States, as high-level inter-Korean military talks resumed after nearly two years. North Korea routinely criticizes the joint drills.

· MANILA -- President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo lifted a week-old state of emergency Friday, after her security advisers assured her the threat of a coup had eased.

-- From News Services