Pakistan

564 Indian prisoners walk to freedom

Pakistan released 564 Indians from its prisons on Tuesday in a goodwill gesture toward neighboring India.

The prisoners, mostly fishermen, were handed over to Indian officials at Wagah, about 15 miles east of Lahore.

“This is the first time that prisoners in such a large number have been handed over to us by Pakistan,” Balvinder Hampal, an Indian embassy official, told reporters. “Such steps will certainly help promote the peace process between the two countries.”

Before walking through the huge gates at Wagah that separate the two countries, the prisoners said they were grateful to President Gen. Pervez Musharraf for freeing them.

“It was a bad experience. I saw jail for the first time,” said 60-year-old Lakshman Shanker. He was one of dozens of fishermen arrested in November 2004 after their boat strayed into Pakistani waters.

Nicaragua

U.S. accused of meddling in election

Two decades after the United States backed a civil war against Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government, a top Sandinista official said Tuesday that Washington was meddling again, leveling accusations against party leader Daniel Ortega to try to prevent him from returning to the presidency.

Tomas Borge, the former interior minister who is currently No. 2 in the Sandinista Party, said the United States was using a complaint about surface-to-air missiles left over from the war to try to derail a bid by Ortega to retake the presidency in elections next year.

“The United States is trying once again to meddle in Nicaragua’s internal affairs, because they are desperate and scared by a certain Sandinista victory in the upcoming elections,” Borge, the party’s vice-secretary said.

In fact, Ortega has lost three runs for the presidency since he stepped down after 1990 elections, and polls indicate his chances next year are slim.

Brazil

Rumsfeld shares doubts about Haiti elections

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld raised doubts Tuesday about the prospects for elections this fall in Haiti, citing the Bush administration’s experience with ensuring the safety of voters in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“It takes a lot of efforts and planning from a security standpoint,” Rumsfeld said. “You simply have to be ahead of it or it can get bad fast.”

The Pentagon chief spoke to reporters en route to the Brazilian capital, where he was to meet today with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and top security officials. Brazil currently leads the U.N. peacekeeping force in Haiti and has deployed more than 1,100 troops there.

On Tuesday at the United Nations, Juan Gabriel Valdes, the head of the peacekeeping mission, said troops would step up action to ensure that militias and gangs do not disrupt elections set for October and November.

United Nations

U.S. aid worker wounded in Sudan

A 26-year-old U.S. aid official was shot in the face in Sudan’s Darfur region Tuesday when her convoy was ambushed, an incident likely to lend more urgency to a new U.S. push to resolve the humanitarian crisis there.

State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said the United States has demanded an investigation into the attack, which occurred in daylight on a road that the United Nations believed to be safe. Officials said the vehicle carrying the U.S. Agency for International Development employee indicated that it belonged to a humanitarian agency.

Ereli said it was too early to know whether the worker was targeted because she was a U.S. official “but obviously that possibility is … on our minds.” The employee was not identified, and her wounds were not life-threatening.