Nation & world digest

Envoy: Russia opposes U.S. attacks on Iraq

CAIRO, Egypt -- Russia would oppose a U.S. military strike against Iraq and thinks diplomacy is the only way to solve the arms inspections impasse between Washington and Baghdad, a Russian envoy visiting the Middle East said Sunday.

Nikolai Kartuzov said Moscow, a key ally and major trading partner with Baghdad, was making a great effort to prevent an attack on Iraq.

Kartuzov, who spoke to reporters after meeting Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa in Cairo, said targeting Iraq would have serious repercussions in the Middle East.

Speculation that America might attack Iraq has intensified following Baghdad's continued reluctance to let U.N. inspectors determine if Iraq's programs to build weapons of mass destruction have been dismantled.

More than 80 holdouts emerge from fortress

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan -- Dozens of Taliban fighters straggled out of a basement where they had been hiding for days since they and other prisoners revolted in an Afghan fort. Some of the Taliban were being treated in hospitals Sunday, a health official said.

Northern alliance soldiers flushed the holdouts from their basement hiding place in the sprawling fort by flooding it with water, said Dr. Arif Salimi, head of the local health office in the nearby city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

"The soldiers poured water into the basement and it was very cold so they all came out," Salimi said. "They couldn't take it any longer."

Three came out first and offered to surrender, and then the rest emerged, he said. There were more than 80 of them.

Poison gas used to rid building of anthrax

WASHINGTON -- Preparing information for lab tests, cleanup crews on Sunday explored the interior of the Senate office building where toxic gas was spread to kill anthrax spores.

The first team of workers entered the Hart Senate Office Building in the morning to measure chlorine dioxide gas levels and "just to see what things look like," said Richard Rupert, onsite coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency.

Equipped with biohazard suits and air tanks, they took photographs and videotapes, checked readings and disconnected some equipment.

-- From wire reports