WORLD BRIEFS

HAITI; Heavy rain in shaky capital

The first heavy rain since the Jan. 12 earthquake doused Port-au-Prince on Thursday night, soaking the homeless in a city where barren hillsides and weakened buildings are threatening to give way. Streets streamed with runoff from the driving tropical rain. Some women stripped and took a shower in the downpour. There are no bathing facilities in the overcrowded tent camps. With the rainy season still a month away, forecasters warned that the storm could bring floods and mudslides to a population in a perilous state.

IRAQ: Sunnis end vote boycott

A prominent Sunni lawmaker announced Thursday that his party would participate in parliamentary elections after all, less than a week after pulling it out of the race. The decision effectively lifts the lingering threat that minority Sunnis would boycott the vote, which the United States hopes will bolster national reconciliation efforts. Lawmaker Saleh al-Mutlaq is himself banned from the election for ties to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. Yesterday he announced that his National Dialogue Front would contest the race, and called on Iraqis to go to the polls.

TURKEY: 11 more charged in plot

A Turkish court formally charged 11 more senior officers Thursday in an alleged military coup plot. Earlier, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan dismissed opposition calls for early elections and met with the military chief to defuse tensions over the probe into an alleged 2003 plot to overthrow the Islamic-rooted government. The government detained more than 50 high-ranking officers this week in the probe.

INDIA: Meeting, but disagreeing

They came, they met, they disagreed. The first formal meeting Thursday, in New Delhi, between India and Pakistan since the terrorist attack on the Indian city of Mumbai 15 months ago saw no breakthrough, as expected, although both sides termed it a first step in building confidence.