WORLD briefs

MANAGUA. Nicaragua will reroute a river on the border with Costa Rica that has been at the center of a lengthy dispute between the two Central American countries, the Nicaraguan government has announced. Eden Pastora, president of the committee for development of the San Juan River, said the dredging project will begin at the end of September and cost $1 million.

HAVANA. Cuban President Raul Castro met with former Panamanian statesman Martin Torrijos, to analyze several issues of interest to both countries, the island's media reported Wednesday. According to reports by Cuban Granma and Juventud Rebelde dailies and the main radio and television stations, Martin Torrijos was welcomed by Raul Castro, as a general secretary of the Democratic Revolutionary Party.

BAGHDAD.Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the scion of a revered clerical family who channeled rising Shiite Muslim power after the fall of Saddam Hussein to become one of Iraq's most influential politicians, died Wednesday in Iran, the country that was long his key ally. He was 59.

SARAJEVO. Bosnian forensic experts said on Wednesday they had found the remains of at least 60 Muslims and Croats in a ravine where around 200 people were killed by Bosnian Serb forces early in the 1992-95 war. The exhumations at Mount Vlasic in central Bosnia, where prisoners were massacred on August 21, 1992, were carried out on the orders of the state war crimes court.

PHNOM PENH. A Cambodian court sentenced an American man on Wednesday to 10 years in prison for sexually abusing a teenage girl. Phnom Penh Municipal Court Judge Chan Madina found Michael James Dodd of Washington, D.C. guilty of soliciting sex from a 14-year-old girl. Dodd was also ordered to pay 20 million riel ($4,878) in compensation to the girl's family.

TEGUCIGALPA. Honduras' interim leader said Tuesday he doesn't fear sanctions after an international delegation failed to win a pledge to restore ousted President Manuel Zelaya and Washington announced it will stop issuing most visas at its embassy in Honduras. "Nobody is coming here to impose anything on us, unless troops come from somewhere else and force us," Micheletti said.