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Saudi, Iranian Leaders Address Sectarian Strife
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Sunni and Shiite heavyweights Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed Saturday to fight the spread of sectarian strife that threatens to spill over from their neighbor Iraq, the Saudi foreign minister said.
Saudi King Abdullah held talks with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was on his first official trip to Saudi Arabia. A Saudi official said earlier that the Sunni Muslim kingdom would seek Shiite Iran's help to ease sectarian tensions in Iraq and keep them from erupting into full-blown civil war.
Killings by Sunni and Shiite death squads in Iraq and the political crisis in Lebanon dividing Sunni and Shiite parties have led to fears of sectarian conflict in the Middle East.
"The two parties have agreed to stop any attempt aimed at spreading sectarian strife in the region," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told reporters without elaborating.
Saudi Arabia has led a diplomatic drive in recent months to counterbalance what is regarded as Iran's growing influence in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.
A Saudi official said the kingdom would try to persuade Tehran to comply with U.N. resolutions by suspending uranium enrichment.
THE MIDDLE EAST
· SABHA, Libya -- Moammar Gaddafi, in an unusual debate Friday with two Western intellectuals moderated by the BBC's David Frost, said that it was time for his long-isolated nation to open up to the world and that one day Libya wouldn't need him as leader. But he insisted that the ruling ideology he has entrenched here for three decades is superior to Western democracy.
ASIA
· SEOUL -- The Japanese prime minister's denial that Asian women were forced into sex slavery by its army during World War II is regrettable and raises questions about the sincerity of Tokyo's 1993 apology, South Korea said Saturday.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stirred fresh anger in South Korea with comments Thursday that there was no evidence to validate claims that Asian women, many of them from Korea, were coerced into serving as sex slaves for the army.
· BEIJING -- China plans to boost military spending by 17.8 percent in 2007, continuing the emerging power's stretch of double-digit annual increases in money for missiles, tanks and the building blocks of military modernization, a government spokesman said Sunday.
