U.S. extraditions request renewed

Italian prosecutors have renewed their request for the extradition of 26 Americans in the alleged CIA kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003, a prosecutor in the northern city said Tuesday.

The previous government, led by conservative Premier Silvio Berlusconi, decided against forwarding the request, but Milan prosecutor Armando Spataro said his office has completed the paperwork and sent a new request to the justice minister in the center-left government led by Romano Prodi.

Prosecutors recently announced the conclusion of an investigation against 26 Americans and several Italian intelligence officials. They include Nicolo Pollari, director of the military intelligence agency SISMI and the highest-ranking Italian official named in the case.

The prosecutors are expected to seek indictments soon.

United Nations

American picked to lead food body

Josette Sheeran, a senior U.S. State Department official and former managing editor of the Washington Times, was chosen Tuesday to head the United Nations’ Rome-based World Food Program for a five-year term.

Sheeran, the U.S. undersecretary of state for economics, business, and agricultural affairs, will replace American James T. Morris, who plans to step down around the end of the year. She will take charge of the United Nations’ largest humanitarian institution, which feeds about 90 million people in about 80 of the world’s poorest countries.

Sheeran is the latest Bush administration nominee to secure a senior position in the world’s most prominent international agencies. Others include World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, who had been deputy secretary of defense, and former Agriculture Department Secretary Ann Veneman, now the executive director of the U.N. Children’s Fund, or UNICEF.

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

Sides compromise after protests

Protesters demanding the Kyrgyz president’s resignation clashed with government supporters Tuesday, but fears of deadly violence eased after lawmakers on both sides said they had agreed on a compromise draft constitution.

Opposition lawmakers said adoption of the draft would end their weeklong protest, which has stoked concern that the former Soviet republic would descend into chaos less than two years after an uprising drove its longtime leader from power.

Fears of a major confrontation had deepened when President Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s national security chief warned that government forces would move within hours to clear opposition demonstrators from the central square they have occupied for six days in the capital, Bishkek.

Ndjamena, Chad

Higher toll reported in clash

A small clash between ethnic Arab and ethnic African villagers along Chad’s border with Darfur escalated into a large-scale attack in which Arabs killed 128 Africans, government officials said Tuesday.

The extent of the Oct. 31 violence had not been clear until a Cabinet delegation reached the remote region Monday to investigate and to call for calm, the officials said.

While the delegation did not link the violence to unrest in Sudan’s Darfur, Arab-African clashes there have undermined stability across a region that includes eastern Chad and the northern Central African Republic.