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Commentary by the Tunis Afrique Presse Agency concerning the postponement of Arab Summit Tunis, 27 March 2004 (TAP)-- At a time when the Arab realities do not really need any description, in view of the numerous crises facing the Arab world and the requirements and challenges that must be taken up by all Arab countries, and after having mobilized all its political, material and human capacities to host the Arab Summit and to ensure its success and the adoption of decisions that respond to the aspirations of the Arab peoples who look forward to the Tunis Summit to constitute a...

An official source at the Tunisian Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed surprise at the attempts by some parties to ignore the real causes of the postponement of the Arab Summit, which was due mainly to the deep divergence of views on issues of substance and crucial choices that are closely connected to the aspirations of Arab citizens and the future of the Arab Nation. Some of these issues pertain to modernization and reform in our Arab countries for the purpose of consolidating democratic progress, protecting human rights, consolidating the status of women and the role of civil society, on the...

TAIPEI - Fighting back tears, Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian recalled yesterday how he survived an election-eve shooting that brought back memories of his worst fear - permanent separation from his wife. 'As I lay there, and after I found out it was a gunshot, my first thought was 'what a coincidence!',' he told a government meeting in his first public appearance since he claimed victory in last Saturday's presidential vote. 'It was very painful,' said Mr Chen, who lifted his shirt to show his colleagues the abdominal wound which required 14 stitches. 'It was really very painful.' The attack appeared...

THE 70 suspected mercenaries who were arrested in Harare early this month in connection with the foiled coup in the Equatorial Guinea yesterday appeared briefly before a court convened at Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison. The suspects, who are facing five charges under the Public Order and Security, Firearms, and Immigration Acts, were not asked to plead when they appeared before magistrate Mr Mishrod Guvamombe. They were remanded to April 13, when their lawyers are expected to make an application for refusal of remand. The suspects, made up of 10 whites, two coloureds and 58 blacks all clad in new prison...

North Korea said Tuesday that it has received support from China for its proposal to freeze its nuclear weapons programs in return for free oil and other economic concessions from the United States. China signaled its support at a meeting in Beijing between North Korea's vice foreign minister, Kim Kye Gwan, and top Chinese officials including Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing. The Chinese side "recognized the rationality" of Pyongyang's proposal to help end the nuclear dispute, a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman told KCNA. The United States, North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia are scheduled to begin talks on...

BEIJING - China has arrested the man who leaked top secret government documents from a North Korean prison camp detailing routine testing of chemical weapons on political prisoners, a report said. The man, who was not named, was seized by Chinese authorities after escaping across the border with his family, Radio Free Asia said, citing a South Korean human rights activist who recently appeared in a BBC documentary on the subject. "I made contact with this person in a chemical factory in North Korea a long time ago," said the activist, Kim Sang-hun, who smuggled the documents out of the...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The founder of Pakistan's nuclear program asked President Gen. Pervez Musharraf for forgiveness Wednesday for spreading weapons secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea, state TV reported. Abdul Qadeer Khan requested the meeting with Musharraf that was held in Rawalpindi, a city near the capital Islamabad where the Pakistani leader has his office, a government official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. Khan requested he be forgiven in a "mercy petition" to Musharraf, considering the services he had rendered to Pakistan's nuclear program, according to a report on state-run PTV. The president told him the...

IRBIL, Iraq -- A video camera has captured images of a man shaking hands with a Kurdish official seconds before blowing himself up in one of the two suicide bombings during Muslim holiday celebrations that killed 67 people. Kurds blamed Ansar al-Islam, a militant group allegedly linked to al-Qaida, for the attacks. The video shows the suicide bomber mingling with hundreds of well-wishers greeting officials of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, on Sunday, the first day of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha. A second attacker slipped in similarly in a gathering of the Kurdish Democratic Party across town....

PARIS -- A public appearance by France's law-and-order interior minister turned ugly on Saturday, as dozens of angry youths besieged his entourage following a visit to the Paris subway. Nearly 50 youths chased Nicolas Sarkozy, surrounded by his security guards, as they emerged from a visit to Les Halles station in central Paris to tout new transportation security measures. The tough-talking Sarkozy, one of France's best-known politicians, was whisked into a nearby police station and on to his car as the youths shouted insults at him. The minister then turned to the youths and engaged in a brief debate with...

Theresa Heinz, the glamorous Mozambique-born multi-millionairess whose husband, John Kerry, is campaigning for the Democratic nomination, expressed surprise recently that "in America, a liberated country, we expect the wife of a president of the US to be, in essence, a modern chattel". Ms Heinz, who has been allocated her own handler by the Kerry campaign, in an apparently vain effort to stop her saying impolitic things, is not the only candidate's wife feeling a little bruised by the rigours of political life. Howard Dean's wife, Mrs Steinberg Dean, has very nearly been put in the stocks for choosing to stay...

A political crisis engulfed President Jacques Chirac last night after his closest ally and heir apparent, the former prime minister Alain Juppé, was found guilty of illegal party funding. Juppé, who was once described by M Chirac as "the best among us", was barred from public office for 10 years and given an 18-month suspended prison sentence. The verdict is a blow to the career of a man who has served at the president's side for more than two decades, first in the Paris town hall when M Chirac was mayor, as prime minister between 1995 and 1997, and now...

CAROLINA, Puerto Rico (AP) - Hundreds of Puerto Rican independence supporters welcomed home a nationalist who spent 19 years in prison for his involvement in the 1983 robbery of an armored truck in Connecticut. Arriving at San Juan's international airport Saturday, the 53-year-old Juan Segarra Palmer told the crowd, "How good it is to be in Puerto Rico!" Segarra Palmer was granted clemency in 1999 by then-U.S. President Bill Clinton, and he was freed from a prison near Orlando, Florida on Friday. Without Clinton's action, he would have been due for release in 2016. "The sentence's long years didn't change...

McLEAN, Va. -- Gov. Mark R. Warner plans to keep convicted snipers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo in the state so prosecutors can put them on trial again and seek the death penalty, despite several states' requests for the men's extradition. Malvo and Muhammad were convicted last year for their roles in the October 2002 sniper spree that terrorized the Washington region and left 10 people dead. A Virginia Beach jury recommended a death sentence for Muhammad; Malvo, 18, was given a life term by a jury in Chesapeake. Several other states, including Alabama, Louisiana and Maryland, have...

NEW YORK -- Despite laws already barring gay marriage, legislators in at least nine states are pushing for new, more sweeping measures in hopes of preventing any ripple effect from laws and court rulings elsewhere. In most cases, Republican lawmakers in states with existing Defense of Marriage acts seek to go a step further by amending their constitutions to specify that marriage must be heterosexual. State Rep. Bill Graves, a bill sponsor in Oklahoma, wants to stipulate that same-sex unions are "repugnant to the public policy" of the state. Supporters say the constitutional amendments are necessary to ensure that legislation...

VIENNA, Austria -- Libya has handed U.N. inspectors drawings of a nuclear weapon, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday, in the most concrete sign that the North African nation was serious about building such arms. "We have been shown nuclear weapons drawings that the Libyans have in their possession," Mark Gwozdecky, chief spokesman for the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, said in Vienna. "We have put those drawings under our seal, and they are secure." Asked about the significance of the drawings and the IAEA's announcement that it had them, a diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity said: "It's...

WASHINGTON -- U.S. forces in Iraq captured a leader of the insurgency who is believed to be a close associate of Abu Musab Zarqawi, described by some as a key link between the al-Qaida terrorist network and toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, a senior American official said Friday. U.S. troops captured Husam al-Yemeni last Thursday, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. He is described by U.S. officials as the leader of an insurgency cell in Fallujah, west of Baghdad. The official said al-Yemeni is the highest-level member of Ansar al-Islam captured so far. The group comprises mainly ethnic...

BANGKOK, Thailand -- A Buddhist monk was hacked to death Thursday while begging for food, an attack the police chief said was aimed at inciting religious unrest in the Muslim-dominated south. Thailand's southernmost provinces have been tense since Jan. 4 when suspected Muslim separatists torched 21 government-run schools and raided an army camp in Narathiwat province, killing four soldiers and stealing hundreds of rifles. The monk was collecting food from followers in Narathiwat's Bachor district when an unidentified man approached him on a motorcycle and chopped him to death with a machete, national police chief Gen. Sant Sarutanond said. Walking...

<p>WASHINGTON — On what had been the eve of his widely expected acquittal, the trial of the second person charged by German authorities as an accomplice of the Sept. 11 hijackers was thrown into turmoil yesterday after prosecutors disclosed the existence of a surprise witness purporting to link Iran to the hijackings. The mysterious witness, who goes by the name Hamid Reza Zakeri and claims to have been a longtime member of the Iranian intelligence service, is said to have told German investigators that the Sept. 11 plot represented what one termed a "joint venture" between the terrorist group al-Qaida and the Iranian government.</p>

A nurse who cared for Stephen Hawking yesterday accused his wife of being behind the scientist's mysterious injuries. She claimed Elaine Hawking, 53, had repeatedly assaulted the 62-year-old Cambridge professor, who is paralysed by motor neurone disease. The nurse, who claims to have seen several attacks, came forward to say: "Elaine makes it very difficult for the family and anyone who is there. We all witnessed assaults, all of us. "Everyone was in fear of the woman and in fear of causing problems for Stephen." The nurse, who was part of Prof Hawking's round-the-clock care team for several years, recalled...

CANBERRA, Australia - Gambling-mad Australians, teased for willingly betting on two flies crawling up a wall, have expanded their horizons -- now they're placing bets on cockroaches. A record crowd of more than 7,000 betters is expected to attend the 23rd annual Cockroach Races in the east coast city of Brisbane Jan. 26, Australia's national day, with some bringing their own runners and others buying competitors there. "More and more people are coming to town especially for this premier racing event, where everyone can be the owner of a thoroughbred," said organizer Richard Deery, general manager of Brisbane's Story Bridge...