Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 4

Apr 19 2010 Post-Gazette PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE aP 20, 2010 WWW.POST-GAZETTE.COM A-4 INTERNATIONAL For news updates, visit WORLD BRIEFS Lee vows to avenge sinking SEOUL, South Korea An emotional President Lee Myung-bak vowed Monday that South Korea would respond and against those behind the deadly sinking of a naval ship near the tense maritime border with North Korea. Seoul has not openly blamed Pyongyang for the March 26 explosion that broke the Cheonan in two during a routine patrol, killing at least 38 of the 104 sailors on board. However, officials said they were investigating the possibility that a North Korean naval mine or torpedo may have struck the warship, which went down in Yellow Sea waters where the rival Koreas have clashed three times in the past decade. North Korea denied any involvement and accused the South of spreading false rumors. Officials suspended LAHORE, Pakistan Pakistan suspended a raft of officials following a damning United Nations report into the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, the government said Monday.

Separately, extremists unleashed a renewed wave of violence in northwest Pakistan that continued Monday with the bombing of a school and a marketplace in Peshawar that claimed at least 24 lives in a city on a major U.S. and NATO supply line to Afghanistan. One of the officials removed was Saud Aziz, a senior police officer who ordered the scene of Ms. December 2007 murder to be hosed down immediately, destroying valuable evidence. Another was Javed Cheema, an interior ministry official who claimed that Ms.

Bhutto had been killed in a plot hatched by the then- leader of the Pakistani Tali- ban, Baitullah Mehsud. No action was taken against any officers of the politically powerful army or military intelligence agencies, although the U.N. report implicated the military in the events leading to Ms. death. Rains threaten Haiti PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti The rainy season is bearing down, and Haiti is not ready.

Three months after the earthquake killed more than 220,000 people, more than 2.1 million Haitians remain in tents and under tarps, many on dangerous hillsides and tidal flats. Aid workers had been talking about moving people out of dangerous spots for weeks, but only last weekend did they begin with 62 people. Kyrgyz president departs BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan The deposed president of Kyrgyzstan left Kazakhstan on Monday, ending four days of refuge in the country after he was driven from power in a violent uprising, a Kazakh official said. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ilyas Omarov said he know where President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was headed. Mr.

departure from Kyrgyzstan was seen as reducing the possibility that a civil war could break out between his supporters and backers of the opposition figures who declared themselves the interim government. But tensions in the impoverished country remain high. Goldman Prizes awarded SAN FRANCISCO Six people from around the world were honored Monday at the San Francisco Opera House for their grass-roots work to protect the environment. This year the $150,000 Goldman Environmental Prize, created by San Francisco philanthropists Richard N. Goldman and his late wife, Rhoda H.

Goldman, were awarded to men and women in Costa Rica, Poland, the United States, Cuba, Swaziland and Cambodia. from news services By Heron Marquez Estrada Minneapolis Star Tribune Rick and Barb Durig are heading to Russia this week. But they know when they are coming back or whether they will return with the three girls they are trying to adopt. trip is still said Rick Durig, among several present and future adoptive parents of Russian children who met with U.S. Sen.

Amy Klobuchar, on Sunday. is our final visit, we The Durigs are among thousands of people around the country caught in a tug of war between Russia and the United States over adoptions after a Tennessee woman returned her adopted Russian son by placing him on a plane with a note saying he was dangerous. Russia retaliated last week by suspending adoptions with the United States. Russia may adoptions of children by U.S. citizens if the two countries fail to reach an agreement regulating the practice, the Foreign Ministry said Monday.

Russia that further adoptions be carried out under a bilateral agreement with the U.S., which prepared to work on with the American the Foreign Ministry said on its website Monday. our partners show a desire to reach such an agreement, this will allow us to avoid freezing the process of adoption by U.S. citizens. We see no other options for resolving the Adoption talks, scheduled to begin in Moscow today, were postponed by flight disruptions caused by a cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland. A State Department delegation headed by Michael Kirby, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for consular affairs, is expected to arrive in Moscow for talks next week, the embassy said.

want to be stuck said Barb Durig. are going regardless. We will at least visit the children and get to know them a little Minnesota is the leading state for international adoptions from Russia, and Ms. Klobuchar has been lobbying the U.S. State Department to resolve the issue before adoptions such as the get delayed or even canceled.

Ms. Klobuchar is also pushing the federal government to focus on post-adoption services, such as counseling, to help adoptive parents with troubled kids. She also advocates post-adoption reports to find out what problems, if any, are cropping up. Equally important is the establishment of a national database to determine how often adoptions work or work, she said. vast majority of adoptions Ms.

Klobuchar said at meeting at the Hennepin County Public Library. it is hard to make the argument without the Ms. Klobuchar said there is already federal money available to conduct such post-adoption services, although she did not know the exact amount. She said the need for such services came into focus following the Tennessee incident and one in Hastings, where an adopted Russian boy whose parents had placed him in foster care brought a gun to school this month. Ms.

Klobuchar said she did not know enough about the incident in Hastings to know if it could have been prevented with post- adoption services. doing is looking at this situation and others to see if we can make it better for Ms. Klobuchar said. does make you want to know Jenn and Ron Maskal, in the process of adopting a 2-year-old Russian boy, said their heart sank after hearing about the Tennessee incident and the Russian response to it. was said Jenn Maskal, who is awaiting a final court date to complete the adoption.

this news broke we were just in the final stages. Now we just want to get him Bloomberg News contributed to this report. Adoptive parents on pins and needles Americans wait for new U.S.-Russian agreement on process Thony Images Students pass near a destroyed health center on Monday in Port au Prince. The U.S. military will end its disaster relief mission in Haiti around June 1, nearly six months after sending in thousands of troops in the wake of the devastating earthquake that killed an estimated 220,000 people, a senior officer said Monday.

By Mary Beth Sheridan The Washington Post WASHINGTON In signing a new arms treaty with Russia and hosting a major nuclear terrorism summit, President Barack Obama has shown leadership on his pledge to move toward a world without nuclear weapons. But is anyone following? At home, Mr. Obama faces a polarized Congress and a public focused on other issues, such as the economy. Although many experts think the Senate will approve the new strategic- arms treaty with Russia, prospects are dim for ratifying another Mr. Obama priority: a global pact banning nuclear tests.

Internationally, there is also a mixed picture. Mr. Obama has won kudos, and a Nobel Peace Prize, for a policy that many perceive as less belligerent than that of George W. Bush. But George Perkovich, a prominent nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, noted in a recent report that nuclear powers such as Russia, China and France had not rallied behind the idea of moving toward global disarmament.

Mr. policy will face a critical test next month, when nearly 200 countries are to gather at the United Nations to review the nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty, which is credited with keeping a lid on the spread of nuclear weapons for four decades. Mr. Obama wants to strengthen the pact, which is under severe strain because of and North nuclear programs. The NPT is a bargain that gives all signatories the right to nuclear power while barring them from getting a bomb; the original five nuclear powers could keep their weapons but were to take steps toward disarming.

India, Pakistan and Israel, all nuclear weapons states, did not sign the treaty and North Korea quit it in 2003. But it will be difficult to get tougher penalties because the NPT conference operates by consensus. Iran, which is a signatory and maintains that its nuclear program is peaceful, could block changes. To critics, the forum often becomes a place where nuclear have-nots bash the nuclear haves, no matter what they do. The Obama administration is especially eager to avoid a repeat of the failed 2005 conference, at which the Bush administration was accused of ignoring its own obligations to move toward disarmament.

Mr. Obama will try to establish his credibility at the conference by pointing to his recent achievements: the U.S.-Russia Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), and his new nuclear policy, which reduces the role of the weapons in U.S. defense strategy. Still, the administration could face trouble from policy contradictions inherited from its predecessors. U.S.

presidents have been silent about nuclear program, which that country does not publicly acknowledge or deny. Meanwhile, the United States, following up on a 2008 deal reached by the Bush administration, struck a deal last month allowing India to get power for its nuclear energy plants by extracting plutonium from spent U.S. nuclear fuel. But because India never signed the NPT, its facilities were not subject to international nuclear inspectors, who could detect whether the plutonium had been diverted to make a bomb. chief problem with this agreement is that the U.S.

is allowing a non-NPT member rights that not offering to NPT said Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association, an independent group. Pakistan is so unhappy about the India deal that it recently blocked talks on another part of the Obama agenda: getting a treaty banning production of weapons-grade nuclear material. Obama lacks full support for nuclear policies By Robert F. Worth The New York Times BEIRUT The Iranian authorities on Monday suspended two prominent opposition political parties, banned a newspaper and handed down prison sentences to three reformist political figures, in the latest sign that the hard-line rulers aim to crush any official political representation by the reformist movement. The opposition parties, the Islamic Iran Participation Front and the Mujahedeen of the Islamic Revolution, were told to suspend all activities until a final decision was made about their status, according to the official IRNA news agency.

The move was widely understood as a precursor to a full legal ban. The Mujahedeen of the Islamic Revolution, established during the Islamic Revolution in 1979, evolved to become a reformist group and supported Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition candidate in last disputed presidential elections. The Islamic Iran Participation Front was formed in 1997, after the victory of the reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, and quickly became the most important reformist political organ in the country. The suspension was not a surprise, as many of the members had already been arrested or jailed. But it suggested that the authorities might be moving more aggressively to stamp out reformist political groups as the anniversary of last election draws closer.

The government also banned the reformist newspaper Bahar, accusing it of spreading doubts about last presidential election and questioning Islamic system of government, according to the reformist website Parleman News. Bahar had started publishing only three months ago, after a government ban on the popular reformist daily Etemad. The three politicians, Mostafa Tajza- deh, Davood Soleimani and Mohsen Mir- damadi, each received six-year prison sentences and a 10-year ban on all activities related to political parties or the news media, according to Fars News. They were arrested last summer in the wake of the post-election protests and convicted in a mass trial of opposition supporters on charges of conspiracy and propaganda against the Iranian government. All three men were active during the reformist presidency of Mr.

Khatami, between 1997 and 2005. Mr. Mirdamadi, one of the organizers of the takeover of the American Embassy in 1979 and a Parliament member for four years, was mentioned by Mr. Moussavi in his latest statement deploring the imprisonment of reformist figures. Last week, Mr.

Khatami was prohibited from traveling abroad to attend a nuclear disarmament conference in Japan, opposition websites reported. He openly supported the opposition movement last summer during a wave of protests against the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which was widely viewed as fraudulent. Conservatives have called for the arrest of Mr. Khatami, as well as Mr. Moussavi and other opposition leaders, though those calls have faded since the opposition movement lost momentum two months ago.

Iran jails 3 reformists, suspends opposition parties, bans paper The opposition parties were told to suspend all activities until a final decision was made about their status. The move was widely understood as a precursor to a full legal ban. on Iraq, said the deaths of the al-Qaida leaders underscored their overall improvement. Iraqis led this operation, and it was based on intelligence the Iraqi security forces themselves said Mr. Biden, who came before reporters in the White House briefing room to draw added attention to the results.

U.S. military officials have been highlighting the role of Iraqi security forces as American forces draw down. Under a plan outlined by Mr. Obama, all combat forces will be out of Iraq by the end of August, leaving about 50,000 U.S. forces in the country for such roles as trainers and support personnel.

Those forces will leave the country entirely by the end of 2011. The U.S. military said the early Sunday raid that killed the two al-Qaida leaders was launched after intelligence gathered during joint operations over the last week led security forces to the elusive safe house about 6 miles southwest of Tikrit. Mr. Maliki said ground forces surrounded the house and that rockets were fired from the air.

The U.S. military said an American UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter crashed during the assault, killing one U.S. soldier and wounding three others; the crash was not believed to have been caused by enemy fire. The two al-Qaida leaders were inside the house. Mr.

assistant and Mr. son, both suspected of being involved in terrorist attacks, also died in the raid, and 16 other suspects were arrested, the military said. Mr. Masri, an Egyptian, rose to the helm of the al- Qaida in Iraq organization after former leader al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike in June 2006.

Mr. Masri reportedly moved to Iraq after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan to help form the Iraqi branch of the organization. While Mr. Masri joined Egyptian radical groups as a young man and became a protege of Egyptian doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri the No.

2 man in Osama bin al-Qaida network less was known about Mr. Baghdadi. Allegedly born in Iraq, he was seen by some U.S. intelligence officials as a fictionalized character, invented to bolster the standing among Iraqis of the umbrella group, the Islamic State of Iraq. Al-Qaida in Iraq emerged after Mr.

Zarqawi pledged his allegiance to Osama bin Laden, leader of the global al-Qaida network, in October 2004. The Washington Post contributed to this report. Top two al-Qaida leaders in Iraq killed FROM PAGE A-1.