World briefs 8/30/05

Some Israeli West Bank settlements will go

JERUSALEM -- Not all Israeli settlements in the West Bank will remain in place in a final peace accord with the Palestinians, but there will be no pullbacks comparable to this month's evacuations, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Monday. Sharon spoke as a senior Egyptian mediator discussed Gaza border crossings and pried a pledge from Palestinian militants to maintain a truce with Israel despite a surge of violence following the withdrawal from Gaza and part of the West Bank. In an interview, Sharon insisted that all of the main settlement blocs would remain under Israeli sovereignty, but "not all the settlements of today in Judea and Samaria will remain," calling the West Bank by its biblical names.

Russia apologizes for senators' delay at airport

KIEV, Ukraine -- Russia apologized Monday for keeping two U.S. senators waiting for three hours in a Russian airport after border guards expressed concerns about letting the U.S. military flight depart without an inspection of the plane. Sens. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Barack Obama, D-Ill., arrived in the Ukrainian capital later than expected after the delay in Russia's Ural Mountains city of Perm on Sunday night. The apology for the senators' delayed flight came from the Russian Foreign Ministry. It said the delay, which "was incorrectly called a detention," arose because of questions over whether the international flight en route to Kiev had undergone the necessary procedures.

U.N. official blames U.S. for condom shortage

NAIROBI, Kenya -- The Bush administration's emphasis on abstinence in its international AIDS policies has worsened a condom shortage in Uganda and could lead to an increase in its HIV infection rate, a top U.N. envoy said Monday. Stephen Lewis, the U.N. Secretary General's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, said U.S. cuts in funding for condoms and a new emphasis on promoting abstinence had contributed to a condom shortage in Uganda, one of the few countries to succeed in reducing its HIV rate. "There is no doubt in my mind that the condom crisis in Uganda is being driven by [U.S. programs]," Lewis said in a teleconference sponsored by health and human rights groups. "To impose a dogma-driven policy that is fundamentally flawed is doing damage to Africa."

Official warns Philippine capital of major attack

MANILA, Philippines -- Police installed more closed-circuit cameras in Manila malls, sent out guards with dogs and set up checkpoints on roads Monday as a senior official warned of a possible major attack in the capital following a ferry bombing that injured 30 people. The military said that Abu Sayyaf, an al-Qaida linked terror group, was behind Sunday's attack. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo promised to hunt down those responsible. The ferry was docked at a wharf in the southern Philippines and preparing to depart with more than 300 passengers when the bomb, hidden in a cardboard box filled with old clothes, went off.

-- From wire reports