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News update from around the world;

PRAGUE - U.S. President George W. Bush said he would call on NATO allies to help him disarm Saddam Hussein should the Iraqi leader refuse to give up the deadly arsenal Washington believes he has concealed. Speaking at a joint news conference with Czech President Vaclav Havel, Bush said NATO members would consider the consequences for Iraq of any failure to comply with a new U.N. disarmament resolution at a summit in Prague on Thursday.

LARNACA, Cyprus - Top U.N. arms inspectors arrived in Cyprus from Baghdad with an Iraqi pledge to co-operate fully in a renewed search for any weapons of mass destruction.

LONDON - The British government said it had received a request from Washington for troops to take part in a possible Iraqi military campaign. But Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon stressed that did not mean war against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was inevitable.

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LA CORUNA, Spain - A second big oil slick was forming around the wreck of the Prestige, threatening Spain's northwest coast with further environmental devastation a week after the tanker first got into difficulty. It took some 60,000 tonnes of viscous fuel oil to the bottom of the Atlantic when it finally broke up on Tuesday, priming an ecological time-bomb for the scenic shores of Galicia. Already blackened by a first spill over the past week, they face what may be one of the world's worst ever incidents of oil pollution.

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JERUSALEM - Dovish former general Amram Mitzna savoured victory in the race to lead Israel's Labour Party but faced a tough battle against right-wing opponents tipped to win a January election. Labour's choice of the Haifa mayor, who has vowed to begin dismantling Jewish settlements if he becomes prime minister, pulls the centre-left party further towards the peace camp and away from the hawkish policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

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SEOUL - South Korea said its navy fired warning shots at a North Korean patrol boat that had briefly crossed the Koreas' disputed maritime border in pursuit of Chinese fishing vessels.

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JAKARTA - Indonesia issued orders extending the detention of Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, suspected of involvement in church bombings in 2000 and a plot to kill President Megawati Sukarnoputri, until the end of the year.

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TEHRAN - Iranian President Mohammad Khatami's reformist allies have said they could push for a rare referendum if two bills challenging the hardliners' grip on power were vetoed by conservatives.

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LOME - Ivory Coast's rebels dismissed the government's offer of a referendum on the constitution as far short of the total political change they demand to end their war and give up their guns. Making his biggest concession yet to rebel demands, President Laurent Gbagbo said on Tuesday that a referendum on revising the West African country's constitution would be held within about a year.

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HAMBURG, Germany - A witness in the trial of a Moroccan charged with helping the September 11 attacks was accused of misleading a German court after he retracted evidence that he saw co-plotters in Afghanistan.

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TOKYO - The United Nations' food aid agency said it urgently needed help from aid donors to feed millions of North Koreans, who face the coming winter with meagre food and fuel supplies.

Reuters 11/20/2002