Cheney says Georgia should join NATO

Tbilisi, Georgia

Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday pledged American help to rebuild Georgia and its economy, to preserve its sovereignty and its territory and to bring it into the NATO alliance in defiance of Russia.

Cheney spent four-and-a-half hours in Georgia for a highly symbolic visit to U.S. troops unloading humanitarian supplies at the airport here within sight of an airplane factory that Russian bombs had damaged during last month's conflict over two breakaway regions occupied by Russian troops.

Standing beside President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia, Cheney said that the United States had strongly supported Georgia since protests in 2003 ushered a democratic government to power and that it would continue to do so despite Russia's proclamations that Saakashvili's government was illegitimate.

Washington

Rice to meet Gadhafi in Libya

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits Libya today for meetings with the once-reviled leader Moammar Gadhafi, indicating how far U.S.-Libya relations have come. The last high-ranking U.S. official to visit Tripoli was Richard Nixon — in 1957, when he was vice president.

As Rice and Gadhafi discuss economic ties, regional issues, and oil, the United States will be hoping that Iran and North Korea, in particular, are taking note. Instead of confronting the U.S. and the international community with a nuclear weapons program, US officials say, Libya is reaping the economic and diplomatic benefits of having renounced support of terrorists and weapons-of-mass-destruction ambitions in 2003.

But some families of victims of terrorist acts carried out by Libya are not satisfied with reparation settlements.

Johannesburg, S. Africa

Angola holds first election in 16 years

More than 8 million people — nearly half of the population — have registered to vote in war-ravaged Angola, a country with an abundance of oil, diamonds and grinding poverty that is holding its first election in 16 years today.

The last election, in 1992, degenerated into another decade of the civil war that uprooted millions of Angolans. In contrast, Friday's legislative vote follows six years of peace and is expected to go fairly smoothly.

Some civic and human-rights groups, as well as opposition officials, contend that the governing party, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, known as the MPLA, has compromised the fairness of the election by abusing its control of state resources, especially with heavy-handed propaganda.

Angola is producing almost 2 million barrels of oil a day, rivaling Nigeria as Africa's largest producer. China and the United States are its biggest oil customers. It is the world's fourth-largest producer of diamonds. But Angola's elite has long been criticized for enriching itself at the expense of the country's impoverished citizens.

Also

Oil-rig crash: A helicopter carrying foreign contractors, including an American, crashed on Wednesday into an oil platform off the coast of Dubai, killing all seven people on board and halting production in one of the emirate's four offshore oil fields.

Beheadings suspects: Two Cubans, a man and a woman, were arrested by Mexican police in Cancún for their alleged involvement in the beheadings of a dozen men found Aug. 28 outside Merida, the capital of Yucatan state.

Commuters burn trains: Police used tear gas and rubber bullets to quell protests in which Argentine commuters, frustrated by delays, burned trains in at least two locations near Buenos Aires on Thursday.

Seattle Times news services