France wants to sell weapons to Iraq

Paris

France, which opposed the Iraq war, is in talks to resume sales of military equipment to Iraq, French and Iraqi officials say.

This means that France, a major global arms vendor and once a key supplier to ex-Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, is maneuvering back into a lucrative military market that the United States has dominated since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The officials say French merchandise now on offer includes helicopters and spare parts for weaponry that France sold Iraq back in the 1980s.

It's not about "replacing the Americans, or rejecting them," Jawad Bashara, spokesman for the Iraqi Embassy in France, said Friday. "Iraq needs to renew its military capacity and needs to have several arms suppliers, not just one state."

Bashara said a delegation headed by Iraq's air-force chief is expected in France in the next two weeks to finalize a contract for 30 surveillance and rescue helicopters, with an option to buy 20 more.

Mexico City

Surge of violence leaves dozens dead

In another violent spasm, more than two dozen people were killed in Mexico within hours late Thursday and early Friday, including a newspaper publisher, two federal agents and a group gunned down as they drank at a bar.

In the northern city of Chihuahua, 11 people died when four masked men dressed in black entered the Rio Rosas bar late Thursday and raked customers with gunfire. A columnist for a local newspaper was among the dead. Early Friday, two federal agents and two drug-trafficking suspects were killed in a shootout along the highway between Chihuahua and Ciudad Juárez, an epicenter of drug violence.

Miguel Angel Villagomez, the editor and publisher of La Noticia, a daily newspaper in the state of Michoacan, was found shot to death Friday.

In Tijuana, 13 people were reported killed late Thursday and early Friday, including a newspaper vendor who may have been targeted because he earlier witnessed another murder, Mexican media reported.

Kiev, Ukraine

Dispute erupts over Ukraine election

Ukraine's Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said Friday there will be no early parliamentary elections, defying a presidential decree and raising the stakes in her fierce political battle with President Viktor Yushchenko, who on Thursday set the early vote for Dec. 7.

Tymoshenko called his decision unconstitutional and said Ukraine has no money for an early election and predicted that parliament will not pass the necessary legislation.

The two leaders led the 2004 pro-democracy protests that propelled Yushchenko to the presidency and put this former Soviet republic on a pro-Western course. But they have become bitter rivals ahead of the 2010 presidential election, in which they are both expected to be candidates.

Also

Iran aid for Bolivia: Iran's top diplomat in Bolivia says his country will open two low-cost public-health clinics in South America's poorest nation.

Burger ban: The Venezuelan government has ordered all McDonald's restaurants in the country closed for 48 hours for what it calls irregularities in the financial books of the fast-food chain. The left-leaning government of President Hugo Chávez, an outspoken critic of the U.S., last year shut down the Venezuelan subsidiary of Coca-Cola Co. for 48 hours for alleged bookkeeping irregularities.

Seattle Times news services