Managua, Nicaragua

Former Nicaraguan President Arnoldo Alemán faces civil trial in the United States over allegations he purchased U.S. bank certificates with money stolen from Nicaragua's government, the American Embassy said yesterday.

Court documents indicate the trial is scheduled to begin Sept. 6 in Miami.

The civil complaint filed by the U.S. government alleges certificates of deposit "were purchased with funds stolen from the Nicaraguan government by [Byron] Jerez and Alemán." Jerez was Alemán's former tax chief.

The certificates in U.S. banks total almost $700,000, according to the complaint. Jerez is serving an eight-year prison term in Nicaragua. Alemán was sentenced to 20 years in prison on fraud and money-laundering convictions in Nicaragua more than two years ago. He is under house arrest.

Geneva

Fiscal flaws halt grants to Uganda

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria said yesterday it has suspended grants to Uganda based on evidence of serious financial mismanagement.

A review by accountants of one of the Global Fund's five grants to Uganda uncovered mismanagement by the African country's Ministry of Health, which oversees the implementation of Global Fund programs, the organization said.

The grants are worth a total of $201 million, of which $45.4 million has been disbursed, the Global Fund said. The agency gave the Uganda ministry until the end of October to correct the problems.

Washington, D.C.

Iranian sentenced in absentia to 7 years

Mohsen Sazegara, an Iranian reformer who is a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, learned this week he had been sentenced in absentia to seven years in prison in his home country. The charges against him were not clear, he said.

Sazegara, 50, was a founder of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps at the outset of the Iranian revolution in 1979 but evolved into an outspoken critic of theocratic rule.

Sazegara was previously imprisoned in Iran for promoting changes in the constitution and for seeking a referendum on the charter. He tried to run for president in 2001, but Iran's powerful Council of Guardians rejected his candidacy, he said.

N-technology given to N. Korea reported

Pakistan's president said the country's former top nuclear scientist gave centrifuge machines and their designs to North Korea, detailing for the first time what nuclear technology was transferred to the communist nation, a Japanese media report said.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said in an interview with Kyodo News released yesterday that Abdul Qadeer Khan "passed centrifuges — parts and complete. I do not exactly remember the number."

Musharraf's spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan added that the technology Khan passed on was only a small part of what would be needed to develop a nuclear bomb.

Also

Aid plea: U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, ending a two-day visit to Niger, appealed for more aid yesterday for the hunger-stricken nation and said the crisis could deepen if more help doesn't come soon.

Jet crash: A jet belonging to Canada's Snowbirds precision flying team crashed at an air show in Thunder Bay in northwestern Ontario yesterday, but the pilot survived, witnesses and officials said. The cause of the crash was under investigation.

Compiled from The Associated Press, Reuters and The Washington Post