WORLD IN BRIEF
Thursday, September 28, 2006; Page A15
Hamas Deputy Premier Freed by Israeli Court
NABLUS, West Bank -- Israel on Wednesday freed the Palestinian deputy prime minister, the highest-ranking of more than 30 officials in the Hamas-led government jailed after an Israeli soldier was taken captive by members of Hamas's military wing June 25 at a border outpost.
The detention of government officials has been a major sore point in rapidly deteriorating relations between Israel and the Palestinians since Hamas won legislative elections in January.
Nasser Shaer, held without charge for more than a month, was ordered freed by an Israeli court, which banned him from going to his government office in the West Bank city of Ramallah for two weeks.
Israel and the West, which consider the violent Islamic movement a terror group, have cut off funding to the Hamas-led government, plunging the West Bank and Gaza Strip into a deep financial crisis.
Thirty lawmakers and four cabinet ministers remain in custody, charged with belonging to an illegal group. On Monday, a military court in the West Bank declined to release 21 of the detainees on bail. A hearing for the 13 others is scheduled for Oct. 5.
Shaer told reporters that if Israel renewed its 2000 offer to turn over 95 percent of the West Bank and all of Gaza for a new Palestinian state, leaving Israel intact, "I would ask the Palestinian people."
* * *
asia
· RANGOON, Burma -- Burma's military junta detained three prominent supporters of detained Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and kept a close watch on other activists marking the 18th anniversary of her democracy movement. The three activists are part of the 88 Generation Students Group, which the government often accuses of trying to destabilize the country.
About 350 activists and supporters descended on the National League for Democracy headquarters to celebrate the party's anniversary. Some sat in front of the party offices amid tight security chanting "Free Aung San Suu Kyi," while foreign diplomats, reporters and activists attended an event inside.
· BANGKOK -- A leading candidate to become Thailand's interim prime minister, Surayud Chulanont, said last week's coup ousting an elected government was needed to end divisiveness that could have exploded into violence.
The military, which ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra on Sept. 19, promised to hand over power to a civilian authority within two weeks and hold a general election by October next year.
the middle east
· BEIRUT -- Lebanon's top Shiite Muslim cleric charged in an interview that President Bush's policies have turned the Middle East into a "hell" of strife, just days after he called Bush "the devil's messenger."
Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah also said that every sect in Lebanon except his own wants to dominate the small, diverse nation and insisted that the Shiite militia Hezbollah, which recently fought a 33-day war with Israel, needs its weapons to defend the country.
· AMMAN, Jordan -- Jordan's military court convicted five Palestinians and Jordanians, including a cousin of slain al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, of plotting attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq. The men were sentenced to prison terms ranging from six months to five years.
Prosecutors had charged the five with exposing the kingdom to retaliatory attacks and harming its relations with an unnamed foreign country, presumably a reference to the United States. They provided few details, however, on the alleged plot.
europe
· BERLIN -- Negotiators for Iran and the European Union held five hours of "very intense" talks over Iran's disputed nuclear program and planned to meet again Thursday, officials said.
· MERIGNAC, France -- Braving queasy stomachs, a five-man team of French physicians took to the skies for the first surgical procedure on a human in zero-gravity conditions, as the aircraft soared and dived to create weightlessness.
The operation, more than three years in the making and part of a three-phase exploration of weightless surgery, is a step toward one day having surgery performed in space, either by a surgeon or a remotely controlled robot. It also is an experiment that may be instructive for a future medical emergency on the international space station.
The flight lasted three hours, but the operation to remove a cyst from a patient's arm took just about the same amount of time it would have taken in a hospital, physicians said.
-- From News Services
