World Digest
Sergeant found guilty of deserting in 1965

MICHAEL KAPPELER / AP Britain's Queen Elizabeth II delivers a speech in Berlin yesterday at a state dinner given by the German president in her honor. > See story below

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

Japan has asked for leniency for Jenkins, now 64 and frail, out of sympathy for his Japanese wife, Hitomi Soga. The couple met and married after she was abducted to North Korea in 1978.

Jenkins pleaded guilty to desertion and aiding the enemy. He denied encouraging disloyalty and soliciting other service members to desert, and the prosecution dismissed those charges, witnesses said. Sentencing was to take place later.

Expectations have been high for a deal in which Jenkins pleaded guilty to deserting to North Korea in 1965 and offered to tell what he knows about the secretive communist state in return for punishment lighter than the maximum of life in prison.

Khartoum, Sudan

Aid groups cut off from refugee camps

Sudanese security forces surrounded several camps in the war-torn region of Darfur yesterday, relocated refugees against their will and denied access to humanitarian groups, the United Nations said. Sudan denied closing off the camps but said angry Arab tribesmen gathered in the area.

The U.N. World Food Program said several camps were surrounded, apparently in retaliation for the abduction of 18 Arabs by Darfur rebels.

Sudan's government is accused of backing Arab militia known as Janjaweed in a campaign of violence — including rapes, killings and the burning of villages — to help put down a 19-month rebellion by non-Arab African groups. The government denies backing the militias.

Attacks have uprooted 1.5 million of Darfur's people, and at least 70,000 have died, mostly through disease and hunger, according to the world body.

Berlin
 
Queen Elizabeth visits Germany

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II placed a wreath at Germany's national war memorial and urged remembrance of the suffering of both sides in World War II during a state visit yesterday that underlined the two countries' postwar reconciliation.

President Horst Koehler received the queen and her husband, Prince Philip, at a state dinner.

"In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognize how precious is the peace we have built in Europe since 1945," the queen said.

The queen earlier received military honors at Charlottenburg Palace and met with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and a group of German and British teenagers. Today she is scheduled to open a conference at the British Embassy on climate change and attend a concert at the Berlin Philharmonic Hall.

Caracas, Venezuela

Troops sent to beef up security in two states

Venezuela's government deployed troops yesterday in two opposition-held states where regional election results were delayed, and one governor accused President Hugo Chávez of trying to force him from office.

Two days after Sunday's polls, soldiers ringed the office of Gov. Eduardo Lapi in central Yaracuy state, who suggested Chávez was carrying out a coup d'état against him.

Security was also reinforced in Carabobo state, whose Gov. Henrique Salas is a prominent opponent of Chávez.

Pro-Chávez candidates have been declared winners of 18 of the country's 22 state governorships contested. This has consolidated the left-wing president's political grip over the world's No. 5 oil exporter after he won an Aug. 15 referendum on his rule.

Also

Police have imposed a curfew on a town in eastern Sri Lanka after 7,000 Muslims scuffled on the streets late Monday after a hand-grenade attack wounded 13 people, including three policemen, officials said.

Iranian Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, praised by President Bush for her commitment to democracy, is suing the U.S. government over restrictions that could block the publication of her memoirs in the United States. Ebadi argued that Treasury Department regulations restricting the publication in the United States of works by authors in countries subject to U.S. trade sanctions are unconstitutional.