LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY
“We seriously emphasize that the election should be on time as required by the constitution.”
Waheed Omar,
the spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, brushing off calls for Afghanistan to delay its parliamentary elections Article, this page Russia links missile shield to U.S. talks
MOSCOW - Russia wants the U.S. to share detailed data about its planned missile shield under a new arms control treaty, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Tuesday, signaling potential new difficulties in the ongoing negotiations between Moscow and Washington.
Putin’s televised remarks set a defiant tone as negotiators try to hammer out a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that expired on Dec. 5. The two countries had hoped to reach a deal before the end of the year, but problems persist.
Putin also said that Russia will build new weapons to offset the U.S. missile-defense system.
The U.S. State Department rejected Putin’s call, saying the START successor treaty would only deal with strategic offensive arms.
“While the United States has long agreed that there is a relationship between missile offense and defense, we believe the START follow-on agreement is not the appropriate vehicle for addressing it,” spokesman Ian Kelly said in Washington.
“We have agreed to continue to discuss the topic of missile defense with Russia in a separate venue,” he said.
2009 a record year for Somali pirates
HONG KONG - Somali pirates carried out a record number of attacks and hijackings in 2009 despite the deployment of international warships to thwart them and a U.N.
Security Council resolution to bring the fight against them to shore.
Pirates operating across the Gulf of Aden and along the coast of Somalia have attacked 214 vessels so far this year, resulting in 47 hijackings, the Piracy Reporting Center of the International Maritime Bureau said Tuesday. Pirates are holding 12 of those ships and 263 crew members for ransom.
In 2008, according to the maritime bureau, 111 ships were attacked in the region, a 200 percent increase from 2007.
The hijackings continued this week with the seizure of a Greek-owned cargo ship and a British-flagged chemical tanker, both of which were taken on Monday.
The St. James Park, a chemical tanker bound from Spain to Thailand, issued a distress signal Monday that it was being attacked in the Gulf of Aden. The owners confirmed Tuesday that the ship had been seized.
The other hijacking Monday, of a Greek-owned bulk carrier under the Panamanian flag, occurred off the coast of Somalia. An officer with the European Union force declined to provide details about the episode, which was confirmed by Noel Choong, an official with the piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Cuba grants visit with U.S. prisoner
HAVANA - The Cuban government has given a U.S.
diplomat access to a jailed American citizen accused of providing communications equipment to dissident groups while working as a government contractor, a U.S. official in Havana said Tuesday.
The case has drawn denunciations from Cuban President Raul Castro and further strained U.S.-Cuba relations after months of slow but steady progress toward easing their halfcentury diplomatic standoff.
The consular official visited Monday at an undisclosed location where the American is being held after his arrest in early December, according to a spokesman at the U.S. Interests Section, which Washington maintains in Havana instead of an embassy.
The State Department said previously that the man was working as a subcontractor for the Maryland-based economic development organization Development Alternatives Inc.
Jim Boomgard, the company’s president and chief executive, said the man was part of a new USAID program intended to “strengthen civil society in support of just and democratic governance in Cuba.”Nazi-loot suit against Vatican tossed
VATICAN CITY - An American appeals court Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit by Holocaust survivors who alleged the Vatican bank accepted millions of dollars of their valuables stolen by Nazi sympathizers.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a lower court ruling that said the Vatican bank was immune from such a lawsuit under the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which generally protects foreign countries from being sued in U.S. courts.
Holocaust survivors from Croatia, Ukraine and Yugoslavia had filed suit against the Vatican bank in 1999, alleging that it stored and laundered the looted assets of thousands of Jews, Serbs and Gypsies who were killed or captured by the Nazibacked Ustasha regime that controlled Croatia.
They sought an accounting from the Vatican, as well as restitution and damages.
The court didn’t rule on the allegations.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 12/30/2009