Monday, February 11, 2008; A14

ISRAEL

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday ruled out a broad military operation in the Gaza Strip, despite rising anger after an 8-year-old boy lost a leg in a Palestinian rocket attack.

"Anger is not an operational plan," Olmert said in response to demands for a full-scale invasion of northern Gaza to take over the areas where fighters have been launching rockets. Some cabinet members called for the assassination of Hamas political leaders.

Residents of the battered town of Sderot near Gaza blocked the main highway entrance into Jerusalem, demanding government action after doctors amputated Osher Twito's leg following a rocket attack Saturday that also wounded his 19-year-old brother.

"We must take a neighborhood in Gaza and wipe it off the map," cabinet minister Meir Sheetrit said after warning citizens to flee.

In a public statement at the beginning of the weekly cabinet meeting, Olmert said the surge in Palestinian rocket attacks was a response to Israel's own military strikes. He said 200 Gaza militants had been killed in recent months "as a result of initiated, aggressive, planned and comprehensive activity" by Israeli military and security forces.

Olmert indicated that Israel might target Hamas political leaders.

Gunmen wounded President Jos¿ Ramos-Horta and opened fire on a car carrying the prime minister Monday in apparently coordinated attacks against the leadership of the recently independent nation, officials said.

The president, wounded in the stomach, was in stable condition, while Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao escaped unhurt.

Monday's violence plunged the tiny country into fresh uncertainty after a flare-up in violence in 2006 killed 37 people, displaced more than 150,000 and led to the collapse of the government.

Notorious rebel leader Alfredo Reinado was killed in the attack, as was one of Ramos-Horta's guards, an army spokesman said.

Ramos-Horta, 58, shared the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize with countryman Bishop Carlos Belo for leading a nonviolent struggle against the Indonesian occupation.

Japanese police have arrested a U.S. Marine accused of raping a 14-year-old girl in southern Japan, authorities said Monday.

Tyrone Luther Hadnott, 38, of Camp Courtney in Okinawa, allegedly raped the girl in a parked car Sunday evening, an Okinawa police official said on condition of anonymity.

Okinawa police took custody of the Marine for investigation, the official said. Hadnott's home town was not immediately available.

U.S. officials in Japan could not immediately confirm the case.

U.S. military bases in Japan have long caused complaints from local residents about crime, noise and accidents; the rape in 1995 of a 12-year-old Okinawa schoolgirl by three U.S. servicemen sparked huge protests.

A senior U.N. official warned Sunday that a vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of Kenyans displaced by post-election violence would not be able to return home any time soon because of the possibility of more violence.

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga, who accuses Kibaki of stealing the Dec. 27 presidential election, are under enormous international pressure to resolve the dispute after weeks of ethnic violence.

They are being pressed by an international mediation team to accept a power-sharing agreement so the nation can begin dealing with the more than 300,000 people who have been displaced.

Odinga was involved in a delicate balancing act Sunday, promising not to betray hard-line supporters while assuring mediators he was ready to negotiate.

Markets opened Sunday in Chad's capital and residents returned to their weekend routines a week after an attempted coup by rebels triggered days of violence.

The situation in the interior of the desert country was less clear. The French military reported "light skirmishes" between rebels and government forces Friday in central Mongo region, northeast of the capital, N'Djamena, but the fighting appeared to have stopped by Saturday.

In a sign of increased stability, E.U. foreign policy chief Javier Solana said the European Union would decide within days when to resume deployment of a peacekeeping force to Chad.

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Norway closed its embassy in the Afghan capital because of terrorist threats, nearly a month after a Norwegian journalist was among eight people killed in a suicide attack on a hotel in Kabul. The Nordic nation, which recently said it would send more troops to bolster the NATO force in Afghanistan, has been singled out at least twice by al-Qaeda as a potential target.

From News Services