World Briefs

06-11-2009 |

Panama Star TEHRAN, Iran – Iran's hard-line president took a final shot at his rivals Wednesday during his last public pre-election rally, accusing them of resorting to a smear campaign against him similar to the one used by Adolf Hitler's propaganda minister.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is locked in a neck-and-neck race against reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi. Both have launched intense political attacks against each other and have turned the presidential election into a display of Iran's deep political divides.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Investigators searched a wrecked luxury hotel in northwestern Pakistan for evidence Wednesday after a deadly suicide bombing the U.N. condemned as a "heinous terrorist attack."

At least nine people were killed in the blast, including two foreign aid workers. Two or three other bodies are believed to be those of the attackers and officials said higher tolls reported elsewhere were inaccurate.

Elsewhere in the volatile region, security forces killed 70 suspected militants in an area close to two major Taliban tribal strongholds, intelligence officials told The Associated Press.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – Palau agreed to accept 17 Chinese Muslims who have languished in legal limbo at Guantanamo Bay, indicating a resolution to one of the major obstacles to closing the U.S. prison camp.

The announcement Wednesday by the Pacific archipelago, which would clear the last of the Uighurs from the camp in Cuba, was a major step toward the Obama administration's goal of finding new homes for detainees who have been cleared of wrongdoing but cannot go home for fear of ill-treatment.

SANTIAGO, Chile – Two retired Chilean generals have been sentenced to prison for shipping arms to Croatia at the time of its battle for independence from Yugoslavia

A Chilean court has sentenced Army Gen. Guillermo Letelier and Air Force Gen. Vicente Rodriguez to three years in prison for illegal arms sales. Letelier also was sentenced to 541 days for falsifying documents.

Hungarian officials discovered 11 tons of rocket launchers and automatic weapons being loaded on trucks headed for Croatia in 1991 in violation of a U.N. arms embargo. They had been labeled as Chilean humanitarian aid for Sri Lanka.

The former head of the army's weapons factory was killed shortly after he was questioned about the case. The ruling was announced Tuesday.