World
US military briefers and intelligence officers appeared to hold conflicting views on whether a major convoy of Iraqi forces was headed out of Baghdad for a confrontation with advancing American troops. The convoy was reported to number about 1,000 vehicles. But, "We've not seen any significant movements of that type of force," Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks told journalists at Central Command headquarters in Qatar. Meanwhile, British artillery was trying to suppress Iraqi militiamen in Basra who faced an uprising by residents weary of Saddam Hussein's regime. And the first truckloads of humanitarian aid arrived in the port city of Umm Qasr from Kuwait.
No Turkish troops will be deployed in northern Iraq unless there's a massive flood of refugees or a threat to national security, the Ankara government's military chief pledged. Gen. Hilmi Ozkok said, "We will not go ... to fight a war or to occupy [and] we have no intention to create a buffer zone." But he expressed resentment that the US, which has vigorously opposed such intervention in Iraq, "does not believe" that Turkey faces a threat from Kurdish fighters on the other side of the border.
North Korea's communist leadership will keep applying pressure in the form of nuclear-fuel reprocessing efforts until the US agrees to bilateral discussions on the matter, a special UN envoy told Reuters. But the envoy said officials of the Pyong-yang government told him they do not plan to build nuclear weapons. In related developments Wednesday, North Korea pulled out of liaison discussions with US representatives at the Demilitarized Zone and sent to its rubber-stamp parliament a 2003 budget calling for increased military spending.
Blaming the murders of 24 Hindu villagers last weekend on rival Pakistan, India test-fired a short-range missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. Within hours, Pakistan replied with a similar test, after first informing Indian authorities, and complained that it had not been extended the same courtesy. The two sides also traded artillery fire across the disputed Kashmir border in which one Pakistani civilian was killed and 14 others were wounded. Unspecified casualties also were reported on the Indian side.
The exile of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori in Japan came under a new threat as Interpol, the global police organization, issued a formal call for his arrest. Interpol cited charges against him in Peru for murder and kidnaping. He's also accused of bribery, embezzlement, and corruption. Interpol cannot force his extradition. Fujimori is under an arrest warrant in the nation he led from 1990-2000. In November 2000, he fled to Japan, which refuses to return him to Peru because his parents were Japanese.
