World
The three-month confinement of Yasser Arafat to the West Bank city of Ramallah was lifted by Israel, freeing him to travel at will around Palestinian areas. But trips abroad still require Israel's OK in advance. The move appeared timed to coincide with the arrival later this week of Vice President Cheney and special Middle East envoy Anthony Zinni, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said it was made after Arafat's police arrested the final suspect in last fall's murder of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi. But senior Palestinians rejected it as "not enough."
Trying a new strategy to find wanted militants, Israeli forces rounded up hundreds of male Palestinians from West Bank refugee camps, inspecting ID cards and taking digital photos of each. Aides to Sharon shrugged off criticism of the tactic by human rights groups as a price Israel was prepared to pay if it prevented "even one terrorist attack."
Voting in the hotly contested presidential election in Zimbabwe went into an unscheduled third day, and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was seeking a court order for a fourth because of government stalling tactics. Incumbent Robert Mugabe, defying a High Court ruling, delayed the opening of polls for five hours Monday and refused to open them at all outside the capital. Meanwhile, three MDC leaders were arrested for reasons police did not immediately disclose. Above, a typical line of Zimbabweans waits to vote.
The riskiest phase of Operation Anaconda was swinging into motion in eastern Afghanistan as tanks and infantrymen headed toward the "100 to 200 extremists" still believed to be holed up in the mountains. A US spokesman for the allied forces attacking Al Qaeda and Taliban members said his men had not come under sustained fire in the past four days. But the ground between the attackers and the enemy positions was heavily mined, and the caves sheltering the latter were described as "intricate." (Opinion, page 9.)
Russia led an international chorus in expressing "regret and concern" at reports that the US was reviewing contingency plans for the use of nuclear strikes against other countries developing weapons of mass destruction. But the Kremlin also announced a summit between Presidents Putin and Bush in Moscow May 23-26. In London, Cheney left a meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair saying the US is not targeting nuclear weapons "on any nation."
