Vermont

Dairy farmer turned Senate candidate dies

Fred Tuttle, a retired dairy farmer who became a Vermont icon and a 1998 U.S. Senate candidate after starring in the political spoof “A Man with a Plan,” died Saturday. He was 84.

The Tunbridge man became a Vermont icon after the local movie “A Man with a Plan” aired in 1996.

The movie is a political spoof in which Tuttle runs successfully for Congress with such slogans as, “I’ve spent my whole life in the barn. Now I just want to spend a little time in the House.”

Filmmaker John O’Brien then persuaded Tuttle to enter the 1998 GOP Senate primary as a publicity stunt — and Tuttle won with 54 percent of the vote. He then endorsed his Democratic opponent, Sen. Patrick Leahy.

Texas

Edward Kennedy to receive Bush Award

U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy will receive the 2003 George Bush Award for Excellence in Public Service.

That would be George Herbert Walker Bush, the current president’s father.

The award will be presented to the Massachusetts Democrat at a dinner ceremony Nov. 7 following a speech by Kennedy at Texas A&M University.

Former President Bush will present the award, which previously went to former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

Kennedy has been one of President George W. Bush’s harshest critics over the Iraq war.

Former President Bush has sole discretion on who receives the award, said Penrod Thornton of the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation.

Recipients of the Bush Award receive a crystal sculpture and a $20,000 cash prize.

Iraq

First Iraqi unit completes U.S. training

A battalion of newly retrained Iraqi soldiers, marching to the beat of a U.S. Army band, completed a nine-week basic course on Saturday to become the first unit of a revived army.

The 700 graduating troops, including 65 officers, will be the core “of an army that will defend its country and not oppress it,” occupied Iraq’s American administrator, L. Paul Bremer, said at this desert training site.

In Baghdad, meanwhile, a bureaucracy is quietly being assembled that will do much of the job of a Defense Ministry, but without the name, an American general reported.

About three-quarters of the recruits graduated here were also soldiers of the 400,000-man army that fell apart under U.S.-British attack six months ago. The American plan calls for rebuilding only a 40,000-man force of light infantry battalions by next October.

Rome

Postwar Iraq resolution displeases French leader

The United States suffered a fresh setback Saturday in its efforts to secure a new U.N. resolution on Iraq, when French President Jacques Chirac called Washington’s latest draft “a disappointment.”

Chirac’s comments came after U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan issued a strong rebuff to the American proposal, insisting he would not risk his staff to play the marginal political role in Iraq’s reconstruction proposed by Washington.

French diplomatic sources said France would not veto the U.S.-drafted resolution on Iraq. At worst, it would abstain, said the sources who asked not to be further identified. But Annan’s tough stance could strengthen opposition among council members, making it tough for Washington to push the resolution through.