World Briefs

JERUSALEM – Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on Sunday called for creation of a limited Palestinian state for the first time, saying it would have to be disarmed.

"In any peace agreement, the territory under Palestinian control must be disarmed, with solid security guarantees for Israel."

"If we get this guarantee for demilitarization and necessary security arrangements for Israel, and if the Palestinians recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people, we will be willing in a real peace agreement to reach a solution of a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state," he said.

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea's communist regime has warned of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula while vowing to step up its atomic bomb-making program in defiance of new U.N. sanctions.

The North's defiance presents a growing diplomatic headache for President Barack Obama as he prepares for talks Tuesday with his South Korean counterpart on the North's missile and nuclear programs.

MEXICO CITY – Five suspects have been arrested in the killing of a veteran crime reporter in northern Mexico, including one man who told authorities the journalist was slain as a warning against meddling with a powerful drug cartel, authorities said Friday.

Eliseo Barron was abducted May 25 by gunmen who barged into his home in Gomez Palacio, a town in the drug-plagued northern state of Durango, and beat the newspaper reporter in front of his wife and two daughters. His body was found the next day in an irrigation ditch.

TEHRAN, Iran – Protesters set fires and smashed store windows Sunday in a second day of violence as groups challenging President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election tried to keep pressure on authorities. Anti-riot police lashed back and the regime blocked Internet sites used to rally the pro-reform campaign.

Ahmadinejad dismissed Tehran's worst unrest in a decade as "not important," comparing it to passions after a football match. He insisted Friday's vote was "real and free" and the results showing his landslide victory were fair and legitimate.

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan – Pakistan said it will pursue an army operation against the country's top Taliban commander, a feared militant based in a tribal region along the Afghan border where a suspected U.S. missile strike killed five people Sunday.

The announcement came as violence raged in other parts of the volatile northwest.