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WASHINGTON: The White House on Sunday insisted
that President George W. Bush learned about abuse at Iraq’s Abu
Ghraib prison from media reports, refuting a former top general’s
assertion that Bush likely knew about the scandal before it broke.
“The President said over three years ago that he first saw the
pictures of the abuse on television,” said White House spokesman
Scott Stanzel in Crawford, Texas, where Bush is spending the weekend
at his ranch. Stanzel was responding to questions about a New Yorker
magazine report quoting the top military investigator of the Abu
Ghraib scandal, retired Army Major General Antonio Taguba, as saying
“the president had to be aware” of the abuse of prisoners by US
military guards at the facility.
NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon: The
Lebanese army bombarded on Monday Islamic extremists battling its
troops for a month in a refugee camp, a day after destroying major
militant positions in the area.Tanks and artillery fired a shell
every five minutes on the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared,
hitting buildings and setting off a number of fires, an AFP
correspondent said. On Sunday, the army blew up two major militant
positions in the camp, an army officer told AFP.
BEIJING: The shutdown of
North Korea’s main nuclear reactor could be just “a matter of
weeks” away, the chief US envoy to multilateral disarmament talks
said here Monday. “Our sense is that we will be down to a matter
of weeks,” Christopher Hill told reporters in Beijing. South Korea
said earlier Monday it expected North Korea to start shutting its
Yongbyon reactor in two to three weeks.
JAKARTA: An Indonesian
militant believed to head the military wing of Islamic extremist
network Jemaah Islamiyah has said he opposed the 2003 bombing of the
JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta, a report said Monday. Abu Dujana, who
was nabbed by Indonesian counter-terrorism police in Central Java on
June 9, told weekly news magazine Tempo that those responsible for
the bombing, which left 12 dead, were “insubordinate to Jemaah
Islamiyah.” Dujana said that fugitive Malaysian militant Noordin
Mohammad Top had wanted him to carry out the operation but he
refused and “did not approve” it, forcing two other men who were
not members of JI at the time to be recruited.
AMARA, Iraq: Night-time
raids by British and Iraqi forces in the southern province of Maysan
left 16 people dead and nearly 40 wounded, a medic told AFP on
Monday. Simultaneous raids were carried out in two areas of Maysan,
one involving a sweep in the provincial capital Amara and in the
area of Al-Mujar al-Kabir area, 30 kilometres (18 miles) south.
“There are 16 killed and 37 wounded, including women and children,
in the operation,” said Jameel Mohammed, director at the Amara
health office.
Paris: President Nicolas
Sarkozy’s right-wing party won a solid majority to launch his
programme of reforms in France’s legislative election Sunday, but
failed to secure a widely predicted landslide.His Union for a
Popular Movement (UMP) won 314 seats in the 577-member National
Assembly, 45 fewer than in the outgoing parliament, according to
final official results. Another 22 seats went to the UMP’s
centrist allies. Sarkozy’s party had been expected to score a
“blue wave” landslide after his stunning presidential election
win over Socialist Segolene Royal in May. But the Socialist Party
made a surprise comeback, jumping from 149 to 185 seats.
 --AFP
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