World briefs 05/08/03

WHO sends team to province hit by SARS

BEIJING -- World Health Organization experts were being sent to a crowded province in China where SARS is spreading fast, while new research published Wednesday suggests the illness is much deadlier than other respiratory diseases.

As the global death toll approached 500, Russia considered imposing restrictions along its border with China, where experts say the disease has yet to peak. Chinese officials arrested alleged Internet rumormongers and revoked the licenses of doctors who refused to treat the infection.

In Washington, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson said China and the United States would work closer on SARS, although a senior Chinese official was noncommittal about providing U.S. scientists with specimens from patients.

New findings in The Lancet medical journal show SARS is killing one in five of patients hospitalized with the virus in hard-hit Hong Kong, including 55 percent of infected patients over 60. In younger patients, the death rate could be as low as 6.8 percent, the study found.

Saudi Arabia says it has foiled terror attacks

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Saudi authorities have foiled plans by suspected terrorists to carry out attacks in the kingdom and seized a large cache of weapons and explosives, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday.

Security forces seized the weapons Tuesday in the capital, Riyadh, as they were searching for suspects, an unidentified ministry official said.

The official, quoted by the state-run Saudi Press Agency, said at least 19 men -- 17 Saudis, an Iraqi holding Kuwaiti and Canadian citizenships and a Yemeni -- were being sought.

He said others also were being sought and their identities would be announced at the appropriate time.

Video shows Sept. 11 hijackers, plotters

BERLIN -- A wedding video shot in a Hamburg mosque has been broadcast for the first time and shows grainy scenes of Sept. 11 al-Qaida suicide pilots celebrating with other alleged plotters, possibly including suspects still not formally identified.

The video of the October 1999 wedding of Said Bahaji being celebrated in a large room at the al Quds mosque -- suspected as a recruiting center for al-Qaida operatives -- has been in the hands of investigators since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Attorney General John Ashcroft cited the video at a news conference with German Interior Minister Otto Schily on Oct. 31, 2001. Ashcroft noted that Zakariya Essabar, a Moroccan who left Germany on Sept. 6, 2001, and remains at large, appeared along with Ziad Jarrah, suspected pilot of the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, and Marwan al-Shehhi, suspected of piloting a jet into the south tower of the World Trade Center.

In the video broadcast Tuesday by ABC and CNN and subsequently distributed to other television outlets by Associated Press Television News, there's a close-up of a bearded al-Shehhi, who had shaved by the time of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Pakistan, India take steps toward reconciliation

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- As nuclear neighbors India and Pakistan took first tentative steps toward reconciliation, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage arrived here Wednesday on a tour of the volatile region that will include Afghanistan and India.

Despite back-and-forth overtures between Islamabad and New Delhi, Pakistani officials and analysts are urging caution and warning against unrealistic expectations.

"It has to be a tiered approach, careful preparations have to be made and measured steps taken. We are not talking about a solution today," a senior Pakistani Foreign Ministry official said on condition of anonymity. "But make no mistake, we are maintaining a positive attitude. We will not do anything to undermine this opportunity."

-- From wire reports