Briefly

Afghan officials say U.S. air raid kills 11 civilians

A U.S. air raid in southern Afghanistan killed 11 villagers, including four children, Afghan officials said Monday. The U.S. military said it killed five militants in the weekend raid in insurgency-plagued Uruzgan province.

Sunday’s incident came as American commanders and Afghan officials hunt for Taliban and al-Qaida suspects and try to improve security in the lawless south and east ahead of planned summer elections.

Their task was highlighted anew by a bold daylight raid on a remote military base that injured three U.S. soldiers.

Abdul Rahman, chief of Char Chino district in Uruzgan, said the attack occurred around 9 p.m. Sunday in Saghatho, a village where he said U.S. forces hunting for insurgents had carried out searches and made arrests.

Jerusalem

Sharon: Peace with Syria requires Golan withdrawal

Addressing two of Israel’s thorniest issues, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told lawmakers Monday that peace with Syria would require a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights and ordered a review of the contentious West Bank separation barrier.

Sharon’s comments on the Golan, made to parliament’s Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee, were an unprecedented admission by the career hard-liner. In the past, right-wing Israeli governments insisted a peace deal could be reached without a withdrawal from the plateau captured in the 1967 Mideast war.

The prime minister did not tell the closed-door meeting whether he was willing to pay what he defined as the price for peace.

Austria

Agreement reached to dismantle Libya’s weapons

The United States and the U.N. atomic agency agreed Monday to work together in examining, cataloging and scrapping Libya’s nuclear weapons program, ending weeks of squabbling over who has the authority to do so.

The deal was reached by International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, senior British arms expert William Ehrman, and U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton, a critic of the IAEA policy on Libya and Iran.

After the meeting at the Vienna offices of the U.S. mission to the IAEA, ElBaradei said the agreement gave his agency the role of establishing the scope and content of Libya’s nuclear program. Once IAEA verification was complete, U.S. and British experts would remove suspect materials from the North African country, he said.

Diplomats familiar with the agency said the IAEA also was claiming the right to verify that all contentious equipment and material had been removed or rendered unusable.