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The Comoros: foreign troops unload on the island of Mohéli MORONI, 19 déc (AFP) - foreign troops unloaded Wednesday morning on the island comorienne of Mohéli, and took control of the army, the gendarmerie and the police force, according to testimonys' on the spot, of which that of a former minister, contacted on the telephone. The attackers launched leaflets affirming that they were "the army of the United States" and that their intervention was related to the fight against terrorism, according to inhabitants' of the capital, Fomboni, of which the former minister Mohamed Hassanari. Military formation, of almost a ...

UN inspectors in Iraq spent their working hours drinking vodka while ignoring a shadowy nocturnal fleet believed to be smuggling goods for Saddam Hussein, a former senior inspector told the US Senate yesterday. In a move that provoked fury from officials of the Swiss firm Cotecna, an Australian former inspector detailed a picture of incompetence, indifference and drunkeness among the men acting as the frontline for UN sanctions. Arthur Ventham, a former Australian army officer and customs officer, joined the operation in 2002 and worked at various sites in Iraq and neighbouring states. He said that at Iskendurun in eastern...

PARIS (AP) - French customs officers are inspecting a North Korean ship at an Indian Ocean island off the coast of Africa as part of U.N. sanctions prompted by the communist nation's nuclear test, but they found nothing illegal so far, officials said Thursday. It was the first time a country was known to have stopped a North Korean vessel under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718 authorizing searches as part of the sanctions imposed on Pyongyang for its nuclear test. Since the resolution was passed Oct. 14, at least four other North Korean vessels have been stopped, but the countries...