World in brief

British official to stump for euro

LONDON - Britain's Treasury chief said Sunday he favors joining the European single currency in principle and suggested he will try to rally skeptical Britons behind the euro.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown is widely expected to announce today that the economic conditions are not yet right for Britain to join the 12-nation euro zone and swap its pounds and pence for euro notes and coins.

But he told the British Broadcasting Corp. that he would campaign for Europe and the "principle of the euro" after delivering his verdict, in a bid to "sweep aside anti-European prejudice" in Britain.

TORONTO - Two more SARS deaths were reported in Toronto on Sunday after a second outbreak of the illness gripped Canada's largest city, raising the virus' death toll here to 33.

The two latest fatalities were a 66-year-old woman and a 63-year-old man, according to Ontario health officials. Both died Saturday.

NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania - Mauritania's pro-Western leader battled an apparent coup attempt Sunday, as small arms and tank fire erupted near the presidential palace in the Arab-dominated west African nation. The fighting followed a crackdown on Islamic activists that started with the Iraq war.

President Maaouya Sid'Ahmed Ould Taya's whereabouts amid the clashes were not immediately known. At midafternoon, the Arab satellite television station al-Jazeera reported that coup forces were in Ould Taya's presidential palace.

WARSAW, Poland - Poles voted overwhelmingly Sunday to bring their nation of 38-million into the European Union, fulfilling long-nurtured aspirations after decades of Cold War isolation.

President Aleksander Kwasniewski, an ardent EU campaigner, underlined the historic dimension of the weekend referendum, exclaiming to cheering supporters at the presidential palace: "We are coming back! We are coming back to Europe!"

Poland, the first Soviet bloc country to topple communism in 1989, will be the largest country to join the 15-nation bloc next year.

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran admitted Sunday that it failed to inform U.N. authorities that it imported a small quantity of uranium 12 years ago but said that failure did not violate the international Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Gholamreza Aghazadeh, Iran's nuclear energy chief, also urged the International Atomic Energy Agency to widely publish the report it released to member nations last week on Iran's nuclear program. Aghazadeh said the report did not back up U.S. claims that Iran was violating international atomic protocols.

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