U.S. looks for ways to punish France

WASHINGTON - Bush administration officials are reviewing U.S. relations with France with an eye to punishing the nation for opposing the war with Iraq.

The United States is considering excluding France from some NATO decisions as well as other U.S. meetings with allies.

Warned by Secretary of State Colin Powell that France faced consequences for its stand on Iraq, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin vowed his country would stick to its principles.

At the same time, the White House on Thursday quashed speculation that President Bush would not stay overnight in France during his trip in early June to the Group of Eight economic summit in Evian.

NEW YORK - American forces caught a Turkish special forces team trying to sneak into the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, Time magazine reported Thursday on its Web site.

The magazine reported that a dozen Turkish soldiers, dressed in civilian clothes and trailing an aid convoy, were detained Wednesday by the U.S. Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade.

Col. Bill Mayville, the brigade commander, was quoted as telling Time that he believed the Turkish team was sent in to inflame local ethnic Turks, who already have tense relations with the city's Kurds and Arabs.

"They did not come here with a pure heart," Mayville was quoted as saying. "Their objective is to create an environment that can be used by Turkey to send a large peacekeeping force into Kirkuk."

U.S. Central Command heard reports of the alleged detention of Turkish forces entering Kirkuk and was looking into them, Lt. Cmdr. Charles Owens told the Associated Press on Thursday.

DAMASCUS, Syria - Sanctions on Iraq should not be lifted before the United Nations provides a formal declaration that the country has no weapons of mass destruction, Syria said Thursday, suggesting that the United States was trying to exploit Iraq's oil wealth.

Lifting the sanctions before that would give the United States "the right to control Iraq's oil and install a government it prefers," the government-run Syria Times said. "(It would) legalize the U.S. and British invasion."

The newspaper said U.S. officials want to distance the United Nations from "any meaningful role in postwar Iraq."

MADRID, Spain - Secretary of State Colin Powell has written a letter to the Spanish foreign minister defending the shelling of the main hotel for journalists in Baghdad that killed two cameramen, including one from Spain, on April 8.

"Our review of the April 8 incident indicates that the use of force was justified and the amount of force was proportionate to the threat against United States forces," Powell wrote in the letter, dated April 21 and addressed to Ana Palacio, Spain's foreign minister.

The letter, a copy of which was printed Thursday in the newspaper ABC in Madrid, came in response to an inquiry from Spain about the attack on the Palestine Hotel that led to the death of Jose Couso, a cameraman covering the conflict for the Telecinco channel. Taras Protsyuk, a Ukrainian cameraman for Reuters, was also killed.

MEETING ON RECONSTRUCTION: Senior leaders of the World Bank and Pentagon are scheduled to meet today in Washington to discuss Iraqi reconstruction.

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