A deep-sea diving vessel with seven sailors aboard snagged on an unidentified object and was stuck on the seafloor off Russia's Pacific Coast, Russian navy officials and news reports said today.

Navy officials were trying to determine why the military vessel, a minisubmarine, was stuck about 625 feet below the surface before starting rescue efforts, Pacific Fleet spokesman Capt. Alexander Kosolapov said in televised comments. He said it might be caught on a cable or fishnet.

Russian news agencies said there was contact with the sailors, who were not hurt.

Kosolapov said there was likely enough air for the sailors to live for four days.

The accident occurred five years after the nuclear submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea after explosions on board, killing 118 seamen.

Jerusalem

AWOL soldier

goes on rampage

A Jewish settler absent without leave from the Israeli army opened fire yesterday on a public bus traveling to an Arab town in northern Israel, killing at least four people and wounding 10. Passengers swarmed the gunman, killing him before he could leave the bus.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called the shooting "a reprehensible act."

Israeli police officials suggested it was an attempt to derail the government's planned evacuation of Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and four in the West Bank scheduled to begin this month.

The gunman, identified as Pvt. Eden Natan Zada, 19, had recently moved to a West Bank settlement known as a stronghold of religious extremists, Israeli police officials said.

Beijing

with N. Korea go on

Diplomats seeking a basic agreement on nuclear disarmament of North Korea decided yesterday to soldier on with more talks despite fundamental differences that have left them deadlocked after 10 days.

Christopher Hill, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs and the chief U.S. delegate, said an accord proposed by China to govern dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear programs has been accepted by five of the six nations involved in the talks: the United States, South Korea, Japan, Russia and China. The holdout, he said, is North Korea itself.

"We want to denuclearize the Korean peninsula, but we seek peaceful use," North Korea's chief negotiator, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, said in Beijing.

Nevertheless, Hill said, delegation heads resolved to keep trying to whittle away differences for another day or so.

Juba, Sudan

Hundreds held over

political rioting

Police rounded up hundreds of suspects blamed for rioting that left 130 people dead and more than 400 injured after the weekend death of popular leader John Garang in a helicopter crash, the Sudanese Red Crescent said yesterday.

Garang died Saturday in southern Sudan, three weeks after he was named first vice president and joined the government that had long been his enemy.

The government and Garang's own Sudan People's Liberation Movement say the crash was an accident. But outraged southerners rioted in Khartoum, Juba and other cities, claiming the government was behind the death.

Lhasa, China

Conditions set

for Tibet's status

China welcomes dialogue with the Dalai Lama through private envoys, but the exiled Tibetan god-king must recognize Beijing's sovereignty over the region if he is to return, a Chinese official said yesterday.

China has long said the Nobel Peace Prize winner wants independence for Tibet and has refused to allow him back inside its borders since he fled to India after an abortive anti-Chinese uprising in 1959.

The Dalai Lama says he wants a mutually agreeable solution that entails greater autonomy, but not independence, for Tibetan regions.

Nouakchott, Mauritania

Junta leader seeks

to reassure West

Thousands rallied yesterday to support the military junta that toppled Mauritania's pro-Western president a day earlier, as the African country's top leader met with the U.S. and French ambassadors.

The meetings with the envoys of former colonial power France and counterterrorism partner America were among the first Col. Ely Ould Mohamed Vall held and appeared designed to assure the global community it had nothing to fear from the new regime.

Western and other African nations and the United Nations condemned the coup. But many Mauritanians applauded the ouster of President Maaoya Sid'Ahmed Ould Taya, saying he was a brutal dictator.

Also

Shipwreck found: Two teenagers swimming off eastern Cuba discovered a sunken U.S. ship from the late 19th century, possibly a remnant of the Spanish-American War, an expert said yesterday.

Canadian medicine: Canada's Supreme Court granted a one-year stay yesterday of its ruling that had cleared the way for private health insurance in Quebec — and potentially the rest of Canada.

Compiled from The Associated Press, Washington Post and Reuters