Iran

Emotions run high over election ‘fiasco’

Candidates considered loyal to Iran’s Islamic rulers regained control of parliament, denying liberals an important forum in their drive to ease social and political restrictions, according to results Monday from the country’s disputed elections.

Reformers called the vote a “historical fiasco,” noting that voters could only select from candidates chosen by conservative clerics.

Conservatives took at least 149 places in the 290-seat parliament, which has been controlled by pro-reform lawmakers since their landslide win four years ago. Reformers and self-described independents won about 65 seats. The final count was expected today.

“The vote was not a sham election. It was a fair and free election,” conservative Ghodratollah Alikhani said in an emotional speech. He gestured so violently that his turban fell off.

When one reformer told him to stop shouting, Alikhani shot back, “Shut up, you idiot,” and ran toward the lawmaker, throwing punches in the air. Lawmakers intervened to keep Alikhani back.

Ireland

U.N. gives update on spread of HIV

The virus that causes AIDS is spreading again in Western Europe and is rampaging through Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where it infected 250,000 people last year, a United Nations health official said Monday in Dublin.

Eastern Europe and Central Asia are experiencing the fastest-growing HIV epidemic in the world, said Peter Piot, executive director of the U.N. AIDS organization.

In 1998, Piot noted, there were only 30,000 people known to be infected with HIV in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. That figure has since risen to 1.5 million, he said.

Piot chided Western European nations for easing prevention campaigns after the introduction in the 1990s of antiretroviral drugs that slow the progression of HIV.

Western European AIDS death rates fell to 3,500 last year from more than 20,000 in 1996. But Western Europe registered 30,000 to 40,000 new infections last year, which Piot termed an “unacceptable occurrence for one of the richest regions in the world.”

Beijing

N. Korea said ready to drop nuclear program

Japan said Monday that North Korea had expressed “readiness” to abolish its nuclear program and the United States hinted at new flexibility as well, as diplomats streamed into the Chinese capital for a six-nation meeting.

The United States is considering a proposal by Seoul to encourage North Korea to freeze its nuclear weapons program, a top South Korean nuclear negotiator said. And a Japanese diplomat, after meeting with his Chinese counterpart, said the North might be willing to “completely abandon” its program.

Progress, or the appearance of it, came in a flurry of diplomacy ahead of six-party talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear program.

The talks convene Wednesday in Beijing, where the Chinese government — longtime communist ally of the North and pivotal economic partner of the United States — worked for months to arrange them. The Russian, American and Japanese delegations arrived Monday, and the North and South Koreans were due today.

Colombia

Death toll rises to 66 in weekend clashes

At least 66 people died in weekend clashes among Colombian troops, leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitary forces, the army chief said Monday.

The two-day toll was extremely high even by standards in Colombia, which has been engulfed in a 40-year insurgency.

Soldiers killed 22 members of a faction of the outlawed United Self-Defense Forces, or AUC, Saturday near Villanueva, some 200 miles southeast of Bogota, said Gen. Martin Orlando Carreno. He said 10 soldiers also died in that fighting.

In a separate offensive Saturday near Llano Grande, about 220 miles northwest of Bogota, soldiers killed 17 members of the country’s largest leftist guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, Carreno said.

He said seven rebels from the smaller leftist National Liberation Army, or ELN, nine FARC guerrillas and one paramilitary fighter were also killed in sporadic gunfights in various locations across the country over the weekend.

India

Blast, fire kill six at main space center

An explosion and fire Monday in a research facility at India’s main space center killed at least six people and seriously injured three others, police said.

Flames erupted at the solid propellant fuel plant at the government’s Dhawan Space Center, on Sriharikota Island, just off India’s southeastern coast, the center’s spokesman, K. Ravindran, told The Associated Press.

Madhavan Nair, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, said there was no immediate setback to the space program.

The space center has been used to launch several Indian, German, Korean and Belgian satellites.