World briefs 02/10/03

Israel offers phased truce to Palestinians

JERUSALEM -- Israel has offered the Palestinians a gradual cease-fire, a senior government official said, while suggesting that efforts to remove Yasser Arafat as Palestinian leader will intensify after the U.S.-Iraq conflict is resolved.

In the Gaza Strip, three Palestinians were killed Sunday when their explosives-laden car blew up outside an Israeli army post after crashing into a cement block barrier, the military said. Four soldiers were lightly hurt. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon offered the limited truce in secret talks last week with Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia. It was Sharon's first such meeting in about a year.

Sharon proposed that Israeli troops withdraw from Palestinian areas where militants have been subdued by Palestinian security forces, said Sharon's bureau chief, Dov Weisglass, who participated in the Sharon-Qureia meeting.

Similar arrangements have failed in the past, in part because Palestinian security forces weakened by Israeli military strikes have lost control in many areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and because Israel has refused to stop killing Palestinian militants.

South Koreans condemn North's nuclear ambition

BUSAN, South Korea -- Thousands of South Koreans staged a pro-U.S. rally Sunday, prayed for North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions and an envoy of South Korea's president-elect urged Washington to hold direct talks with the communist nation.

Returning from a visit to Washington and Tokyo, President-elect Roh Moo-hyun's envoy said he had made the case for dialogue.

"I asked Washington to open direct U.S.-North Korea talks soon without condition," Chyung Dai-chul told Korean reporters, according to his aide Park Jin-hyung. Roh takes office Feb. 25.

Attackers kill Kurdish political leader in Iraq

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq -- Kurdish leaders on Sunday blamed a Muslim militant group believed linked to al-Qaida for the weekend slaying of a prominent Kurdish politician and five other people in northern Iraq.

The assassination of Gen. Shawkat Haji Mushir, 55, a senior official in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, underscored increased tensions between the autonomous Kurdish administration and Ansar al-Islam, which Secretary of State Colin Powell accused of harboring al-Qaida fugitives from Afghanistan.

The attack took place Saturday night in Qamesh Tapa, 45 miles east of the Patriotic Union capital of Sulaimaniyah. Mushir had been trying to use his influence and standing as a prominent member of the Jaf tribe to lure Ansar al-Islam fighters out of their mountain stronghold.

But three Ansar members apparently laid a trap by posing as would-be defectors, witnesses and party officials said. After coming to negotiate, they turned on Mushir with Kalashnikovs and grenades, killing him, two other party officials and three civilians.

-- From wire reports