6 Iraqis detained near California border

Mexico City

Mexican officials detained six Iraqis at checkpoints near the California border over the past week as they apparently were preparing to enter the United States, Mexico's attorney general's office said yesterday.

There was no evidence that the detained Iraqis had ties to any terrorist groups, Mexican officials said. Still, the arrests spotlighted fears that terrorists might try to enter the United States from Mexico. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently raised that concern with U.S. lawmakers and Mexican officials.

Four Iraqis were apprehended at the Mexicali airport Saturday, said Abraham Sarabia, a spokesman for the attorney general's office in nearby Tijuana. Traveling with the four Iraqis was a U.S. woman whom Sarabia identified as Alya Kiryakous Dawood Sako. The four Iraqis now are in the custody of Mexico.

Two other Iraqis were detained March 23 at a highway checkpoint between San Luis Rio Colorado and Mexicali. They also remain in Mexican custody.

The U.S. official said initial, "unofficial" indications were that the Iraqis were just trying to get into the United States illegally and that there was no connection to terrorism or other suspicious activity.

United Nations

Weapons embargo on Darfur widened

The U.N. Security Council yesterday strengthened an arms embargo on Sudan's Darfur region to include the government and ordered an asset freeze and travel ban on those who defy peace efforts in the conflict-wracked area.

The U.S.-backed resolution passed 12-0, with Algeria, Russia and China abstaining because of opposition to sanctions.

The resolution widens an embargo on armed groups in Darfur to include the Sudanese government, which now will need approval from a new Security Council committee to bring weapons into the vast western region.

An estimated 180,000 people have died in the conflict since February 2003, when two non-Arab rebel groups took up arms against the Arab-dominated government to win more political and economic rights for Darfur's African tribes.

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

U.S. warship docks in communist port

A U.S. warship made a rare visit to Vietnam yesterday, a sign the two countries are looking to improve military ties 30 years after the Vietnam War.

The frigate USS Gary, attached to the Seventh Fleet based in Japan, is to remain for five days.

The warship was just the third Navy vessel to make a port call in the communist country since the war ended April 30, 1975.

Most crew members were too young to remember when Ho Chi Minh City was called Saigon, but U.S. Lt. Cmdr. Quoc Bao Tran remembers fleeing the country by boat when he was 7, just before South Vietnam fell to the communist North. This was his first trip back.

"I'm overwhelmed, overjoyed and, of course, excited," he said. "I'm looking forward to seeing the place where I was born."

Toronto

Canadian sealers prepare for hunt

Thousands of sealers armed with clubs, rifles and spears headed for the ice floes off eastern Canada yesterday for the world's largest seal hunt.

The contentious harp-seal hunt, the target of protests since the 1960s, begins about two weeks after the seal pups are born and their fur changes from white to gray. Animal-rights activists say the pups are clubbed to death and often skinned alive, but sealers and government officials who monitor the hunt insist the pups die instantly, under strict guidelines.

Many countries, including the United States, ban imports of seal products. But the Canadian government says the hunt brings badly needed income to its coastal communities, which earned about $16.5 million last year, primarily from pelt sales to Norway, Denmark and China.

Also

Cuba surplus: Cuba's central bank chief said yesterday that the country's economy registered its first surplus in a decade in 2004 and expects another surplus this year as the communist government reasserts economic control after dumping the U.S. dollar and strengthening its own national currency.

Iran politics: Female lawmaker Rafat Bayat said yesterday that she wanted to run in Iran's presidential elections in June, even though no woman has ever been allowed to run for president in the Islamic state.

Bird flu suspected: Vietnam has four more suspected human cases of the bird flu, which has killed 49 people in Asia since the end of 2003, medical officials and a doctor said today.

Mexican mayor: A Mexican congressional committee yesterday delayed a decision on whether the capital's leftist mayor will face a vote that could knock him out of 2006 presidential elections he is favored to win. They could decide Friday whether deputies should vote to lift Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's immunity so the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution front-runner could be prosecuted on a charge of contempt of court, which stems from a dispute over land expropriation in the city.