Germany

Investigator testifies about lead 9-11 pilot

Lead 9-11 pilot Mohamed Atta may have been involved in the plot to attack the United States earlier than is widely believed, a U.S. investigator who helped write the 9/11 Commission Report said Tuesday at the retrial of a Moroccan accused of aiding the hijackers.

The testimony by Dietrich Snell could bolster prosecutors’ contention that suicide hijackers Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah and their alleged accomplice Ramzi Binalshibh formed a terrorist organization in Germany before going to Afghanistan in 1999 to train at one of Osama bin Laden’s camps.

Mounir el Motassadeq, 30, is accused of providing logistical support to the group. He risks 15 years in prison on more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder and membership in a terrorist organization.

Moscow

Chechen leader tied to school bombing killed

Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov, a fugitive with a $10 million price on his head and linked by the Kremlin to a bloody school hostage siege, was killed Tuesday during a special forces operation — a significant propaganda victory for Russia in a war that has left tens of thousands dead.

Television channel NTV showed footage of the chief of Russia’s Federal Security Service telling President Vladimir Putin that Maskhadov had been killed.

Putin responded, “There is a lot of work here. We must augment the effort aimed at the defense of the citizens of the republic” — a clear indication that Russia intends to wipe out the rebels rather than seek a negotiated outcome.

Even if Russia wanted a settlement with the separatists, Maskhadov’s death may make that more difficult to achieve. His killing could well place the insurgents firmly in the camp of the more radical warlord Shamil Basayev. While Maskhadov was secular-minded, Basayev is an adherent of the strict form of Islam preached by Osama bin Laden.

Washington, D.C.

Bush says Mideast ‘has begun to thaw’

President Bush said Tuesday that authoritarian rule in the Middle East has begun to ease, and he insisted anew that Syria must end its nearly three-decade occupation of Lebanon.

“Today, I have a message for the people of Lebanon: All the world is witnessing your great movement of conscience,” Bush said during a speech on terrorism at National Defense University. “The American people are at your side.”

Nearly 500,000 pro-Syrian demonstrators in Lebanon, however, had a different message. The mass protest in Beirut by people chanting anti-American slogans and carrying placards that read, “America is the source of terrorism,” far outnumbered the 70,000 protesters who shouted “Syria out” on the streets on Monday.

The Bush administration brushed aside the anti-American sentiment, saying it was happy to see people peacefully express their views. Bush, undaunted, listed nations — Russia, France, Germany and Saudi Arabia — that have called for Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon.

Beijing

Fire on kindergarten bus kills 12 children

A fire on a kindergarten bus in eastern China killed 12 children and injured at least five others, the government said today.

The fire broke out late Tuesday afternoon while the bus was delivering the children to their homes in Linyi, a city in eastern China’s Shandong province, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

It said that 23 people were aboard the bus when it caught fire. Five children died at the scene, and seven who were seriously injured died despite emergency treatment, it said.

Four other children and one teacher also were hospitalized, the report said.

Kosovo

Prime minister plans to surrender to U.N.

Kosovo’s prime minister resigned Tuesday with plans to surrender to a U.N. court which he said has indicted him for war crime allegations. But he insisted he was innocent of the charges.

Ramush Haradinaj, who was in office for three months, said he would leave today for The Hague, Netherlands, where the tribunal is based.

“Today I have been called upon to make a sacrifice, something I never believed would happen,” he said in a statement. “This means also cooperation with international justice, however unjust it is.”

Haradinaj said his actions as an ethnic Albanian rebel commander during the 1998-99 war against Serb forces were consistent with international law.

Haradinaj suggested others also were named in the indictment. But neither he nor tribunal officials gave any details on the charges or on what crimes he allegedly committed.

Serbian officials accuse him of command responsibility in the alleged killing of several Serb civilians by forces of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army in 1998, close to his home village of Glodjanje.

Nepal

Hundreds arrested at anti-monarchy rallies

Nepal’s political parties launched their first major protest Tuesday against King Gyanendra’s imposition of emergency rule, but truncheon-wielding police poured into the streets of the capital and arrested former lawmakers and ministers at the rally.

Anti-monarchy protests also broke out in cities across the Himalayan nation, defying a ban on meetings that is part of the emergency rule declared Feb. 1. Hundreds were arrested, police and political activists said.

A least two former government ministers and five former lawmakers were among dozens of people arrested by police in Katmandu, said police and political activists.

Elsewhere in the Himalayan nation, nearly 200 people were arrested, the sources said.