World in brief: Taliban: Bin Laden targeted Cheney
A top Taliban commander said al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was behind the February attack outside a U.S. military base in Afghanistan during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney, according to an interview shown Wednesday by Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera.
Bin Laden planned and supervised the attack that killed 23 people outside the Bagram base while Cheney was there, said Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban’s main military commander in southern Afghanistan who has had close associations with al-Qaida.
Deputy White House press secretary Dana Perino said it was “an interesting claim but … I haven’t seen any intelligence that would support that.”
JERUSALEM
Israel rules out ground offensive
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his top security chiefs on Wednesday rejected calls for a massive ground offensive in the Gaza Strip after a renewal of rocket attacks on southern Israel by the Hamas militant group.
The decision gave a five-month cease-fire one last chance to succeed, despite repeated warnings by military officials that Hamas has been using the lull in fighting to smuggle large amounts of weapons into Gaza. But Israeli officials warned of “harsh steps” if the rockets keep falling.
On Tuesday, Hamas said it fired dozens of rockets and mortar shells toward Israel to avenge deadly Israeli arrest raids in the West Bank, which is not covered by the truce. Israel counted only a dozen strikes.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia
Pirate business in a slump
Pirates attacked 41 commercial vessels worldwide in the first three months of 2007, the lowest figure reported in the past decade, a global seafarers’ watchdog said Wednesday.
The January-to-March figure is a significant drop from the same period last year when 61 attacks were reported, the London-based International Maritime Bureau said in a statement through its piracy reporting center in Malaysia.
It was the lowest first-quarter total reported by the IMB since at least 1998. The highest figure was 103 attacks in 2003, according to IMB statistics. The IMB attributed the decline partly to crew members “taking more precautions during their transit through the hot spot areas, as well as companies adopting more in-house (security) rules and regulations for their ships.”