WORLD IN BRIEF

Sunday, March 4, 2007

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.

· JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Indonesian rescuers searched for 44 people missing after massive landslides killed at at least 25 people on Flores island, an official said.

AFRIcA

· RABAT, Morocco -- Twelve Islamic militants were convicted of terrorism-related charges Saturday, including eight with alleged ties to al-Qaeda who had volunteered to fight in Iraq, Morocco's official news agency said.

· OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso -- Ivory Coast's government and rebels agreed on a new peace plan to reunite the divided West African state and hold elections after talks in neighboring Burkina Faso.

They said President Laurent Gbagbo and Guillaume Soro, leader of the New Forces rebels who seized the northern half of the country in a 2002-03 civil war, would sign the deal Sunday in Burkina Faso's capital, Ouagadougou.

A string of peace deals, including the U.N.-backed peace plan that foresees long-delayed elections by the end of October, have foundered as government, rebel and opposition sides squabble over how they should be implemented.

EUROPE

· MANCHESTER, England -- Soccer's rulemakers clarified that no player can wear a head scarf on the field. The International Football Association Board had been asked at its annual meeting to rule on a decision to ban an 11-year-old Muslim Canadian girl from playing in a tournament near Montreal last weekend because she was wearing a head scarf.

· WARSAW -- Pope Benedict XVI has named a new archbishop of Warsaw, the Polish Episcopate said, filling a post left open when his predecessor resigned after admitting to ties with the communist-era secret police. Kazimierz Nycz, 57, the bishop of Koszalin-Kolobrzeg in northern Poland, replaces former Warsaw archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus, who abruptly stepped down Jan. 7.

· LONDON -- A dark red shadow crept across the moon during the first total lunar eclipse in nearly three years, thrilling stargazers and astronomers around the world. Although the phenomenon was partly visible on every continent, residents of Europe, Africa and the Middle East had the best view.

Despite cloudy conditions over much of Europe, a variety of Webcasts carried the event live, and astronomers urged the public not to miss out on the spectacle.

Residents of East Asia saw the eclipse cut short by moonset, while those in the eastern parts of North and South America saw a moon already partially or totally eclipsed by the time it rose in the evening.

Eastern Australia, Alaska and New Zealand missed Saturday's show, but residents there will have front-row seats for the next total lunar eclipse, on Aug. 28.

-- From News Services