Briefly

Beijing

Report: N. Korea insists on relations with U.S.

North Korea took a tough stand Wednesday during talks with the United States, reportedly insisting Washington normalize relations and remove all atomic threats before it would give up nuclear weapons.

For its part, the United States stood by an aid-for-disarmament offer the North rejects as unfair.

The stances suggested negotiators could have difficult work ahead despite vows to make progress in talks that resumed Tuesday after a 13-month gap.

North Korea said the United States must abandon plans to topple its communist regime and instead establish mechanisms for peaceful coexistence, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said, citing a source close to the meetings in the Chinese capital.

The comments were reportedly made by the head of the North Korean delegation, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, at the start of the second day of talks on the North’s nuclear program.

Participants in the talks are the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.

Zimbabwe

Eviction campaign defiantly continues

Riot police turned an urban township into a ghost town Wednesday, rounding up the last residents in defiance of a U.N. call to halt a demolition campaign that has left 700,000 without homes or jobs.

After emptying the Porta Farm township – where some 30,000 people had lived just days ago – earth-movers were seen lumbering into the area to finish clearing debris from destroyed homes, cabins and shacks as part of what the government calls Operation Drive Out Trash. Police armed with batons and riot shields barred aid workers and residents from entering.

The latest demolitions came as President Robert Mugabe paid a state visit to China, which is building a track record of willingness to do business with African leaders whom others shun.

Mugabe is confident China will use its veto power in the U.N. Security Council to protect Zimbabwe from any U.N. censure following the U.N. report denouncing the campaign as a violation of international law, a state-owned Harare newspaper, the Herald, reported Wednesday.

India

Deadly fire destroys offshore oil platform

Fire destroyed an oil platform in India’s biggest oil field Wednesday, killing at least five people and leaving 45 missing, according to the petroleum ministry and media reports.

A supply vessel and an oil rig in the region also were destroyed, Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar told reporters.

Navy and coast guard ships evacuated at least 335 people from the platform, located 100 miles off Bombay, before the fire was brought under control, Petroleum Ministry spokesman R.C. Joshi said. He said at least four people died and 45 were missing.

The Press Trust of India news agency later put the death toll at five, saying another body had been recovered from the Arabian Sea.

Reports suggested some people left the platform on lifeboats and some others were able to cross a bridge connected to another rig, Aiyar said.

Pakistan

Suspect in kidnapping of reporter arrested

The fugitive who set up the initial meeting between Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and his kidnappers was arrested Wednesday in a bus terminal, officials said.

Pearl was abducted Jan. 23, 2002, and later beheaded in the southern city of Karachi – believed to be a hotbed for Islamic militants – while he was researching a story.

Hashim Qadeer, listed among Pakistan’s most wanted men in 2003, was captured in the eastern city of Gujranwala after being under police surveillance for three days, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A Karachi court has convicted four Islamic militants in Pearl’s killing. Among them was Ahmed Omar Sheikh, who was sentenced to death. Three others were sentenced to life terms. All have appealed.