Egypt to close border with Gaza
Rafah, Gaza Strip Scores of Palestinians crossed from Gaza into Egypt on Wednesday evening before Egyptian security forces moved to close the border in an attempt to restore order three days after Israel left the territory.
The frontier was still porous hours after the clampdown, however, with a handful of Egyptian police pushing back Palestinians scaling the wall on the Gaza side and trying to sneak through the barbed-wire fence on the Egyptian side. Hundreds of Egyptian border guards were expected this morning to enforce the closure in earnest.
Elsewhere in Gaza, a Hamas militant disrupted a celebratory rally at an abandoned Jewish settlement, grabbing a microphone from a rap singer who was led away by police firing into the air. No one was injured.
Rice says U.S. delaying showdown with Iran
Apparently lacking the votes to win, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice indicated Wednesday the Bush administration was prepared to delay again a showdown with Iran over its nuclear weapons program.
Describing efforts to constrain Iran from producing nuclear weapons, Rice said “the world is not perfect in international politics. You cannot always get a 100 percent solution.”
Rice last week appealed openly to China, Russia, India and other nations to support threatening Iran with sanctions for refusing to halt its nuclear program.
But Russia quickly registered its opposition to trying to impose sanctions now on Iran in the U.N. Security Council, and the White House acknowledged Wednesday that President Bush was unable to get a commitment from Chinese President Hu Jintao.
Little progress reported in talks with North Korea
Beijing North Korea insisted Wednesday it should get a nuclear reactor to generate electricity in exchange for abandoning atomic weapons development, but the main U.S. envoy at disarmament talks said Washington and its partners have no intention of meeting the demand.
After his first one-on-one meeting with the North Korean delegation at this round of six-nation talks on the communist nation’s nuclear program, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said the sides “did not make a lot of progress.”
“Yesterday was a long day,” Hill said today as he left his hotel. He was expected to meet with Pyongyang’s delegation later.
The talks resumed Tuesday after a five-week recess, and also include China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.
Pakistan interrogating 21 al-Qaidi suspects
Islamabad, Pakiston Pakistani counterterrorism experts are questioning 21 suspects captured at an al-Qaida hide-out for clues about remnants of the terror network and the Taliban, an intelligence official said Wednesday.
The suspects — who intelligence official said include Afghans — were captured this week during the biggest-ever military operation in North Waziristan, a strategic tribal region in North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan.
Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain, the top army commander responsible for anti-terrorism operations in northwestern Pakistan, said Tuesday that troops had destroyed a major al-Qaida hide-out and caught “some important men.”
He would not identify them.