WORLD & NATION: ABROAD

Compiled from news dispatches

July 23, 2008

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hopes to judge North Korea's seriousness about abandoning nuclear weapons when she holds the Bush administration's highest-level talks in four years with the Stalinist state this week. The North has been given a four-page draft document laying out what the United States wants from it to prove it has told the truth about its past atomic programs. Rice expects Pyongyang's foreign minister to provide at least an initial response to the proposal at today's meeting. The draft calls for intrusive inspections of North Korean nuclear facilities, soil sampling and interviews with key scientists.

A Palestinian attacker turned a construction vehicle into a fearsome weapon in Jerusalem just hours before Barack Obama's visit yesterday, ramming a bus, overturning a car and injuring five people before he was shot dead. It was the second attack of its kind in less than a month. On July 2, a Palestinian smashed cars and a bus with his heavy construction vehicle in another part of Jerusalem, killing three people and wounding dozens. Both men were from east Jerusalem, where Palestinian residents hold Israeli ID cards and can move freely about Israel. Yesterday, the Palestinian rammed his vehicle into a bus several times before the bus driver moved the vehicle to safety, then crushed a small car with his scoop, overturned a sedan and repeatedly hit cars waiting at a stoplight before he was shot dead.

India's government survived a bruising political battle to win a confidence vote yesterday, reviving a landmark nuclear energy deal with the United States that is at the center of an emerging partnership between the world's two largest democracies. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Congress party fought hard to secure victory, and appeared to cut backroom deals when all else failed. An airport was named after one lawmaker's father, another was promised a high-level job and - rival politicians allege - many others received millions of dollars in bribes. The deal making dismayed many in India, and the political hostility it fostered was on display during yesterday's parliamentary debate, which repeatedly degenerated into an angry back-and-forth as opposition lawmakers heckled government supporters.

Europe turned up pressure on Zimbabwe's president to share power with the opposition, toughening sanctions yesterday against Robert Mugabe just as his ruling party was to begin talks with its chief rival mediated by South Africa. Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai met face-to-face Monday for the first time in 10 years and agreed to formal talks about power sharing after three months of state-sponsored electoral violence. Analysts said growing international pressure coupled with Zimbabwe's economic meltdown left Mugabe little choice but to sign the agreement with the opposition.