World in brief

Thailand: Arrests block Islamic terror plot

CHIANG MAI, Thailand - A plot to blow up tourist sites and five Western embassies in Thailand - allegedly including the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok - was foiled with the arrest of four terrorism suspects, authorities said Tuesday.

It is unclear how far the plot had progressed, but all four suspects allegedly are members of the Jemaah Islamiah terrorism network, which is blamed for last year's nightclub bombing in Bali, Indonesia, that killed 202 people.

Three of the suspects were arrested Tuesday in early morning raids in southern Thailand. The other suspect was arrested last month in Bangkok and taken to his native Singapore, where he apparently implicated the three.

Although Jemaah Islamiah has used Thailand as a meeting place to plan some operations, including the Bali bombing, Tuesday's arrests marked the first time that members of the network had been arrested there for plotting an attack.

FIREFIGHT IN AFGHANISTAN: American troops killed four suspected Taliban members in a three-hour gunbattle on the Pakistani border, a military spokesman said Tuesday. The soldiers were on patrol when they came under attack shortly before dawn Tuesday, Col. Rodney Davis said. There were no American casualties.

The troops came under attack near Shkin in southeastern Afghanistan, a border area where there have been frequent raids by militants from Pakistan.

UNITED NATIONS - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan named a veteran arms expert Tuesday to replace Hans Blix, the United Nations' chief weapons inspector who led a fruitless search for illicit weapons in Iraq.

Dimitri Perricos, who ran the search in Iraq for chemical and biological weapons and nuclear programs, has been Blix's deputy for three years at the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission.

LONDON - Former Lebanon hostage Terry Waite, who was chained to the wall of a Beirut cell for nearly five years, will spend a day in a British prison to raise money for charity.

The 64-year-old writer and broadcaster will spend 24 hours in a Birmingham prison cell to help raise money for sick children, he said Tuesday.

Despite spending 1,760 days sleeping on the floor of a Beirut cell before his release in 1991, Waite said he had no qualms about the charity challenge.

Money raised from the Sept. 6 event will be donated to the Diana, Princess of Wales Children's Hospital in Birmingham.

TOKYO - Japan barred a North Korean cargo ship from leaving port Tuesday because of safety violations, amid efforts by Tokyo and Washington to crack down on illicit commerce with the communist country and rein in its nuclear programs.

The cargo ship Nam Sang was barred from leaving the western Japanese port of Maizuru after failing inspections, said Maizuru Coast Guard official Hiroyuki Yokoyama.

UNITED NATIONS - The United States has warned the European Union that its promotion of the International Criminal Court is putting more strains on trans-Atlantic relations.

"It would be very unfortunate if this issue were to create discord and disharmony" at the upcoming summit between the United States and the European Union on June 25, a confidential note sent to EU governments last week said.

In the memorandum, the Bush administration accused the Europeans of trying to subvert U.S. efforts to protect Americans from prosecution by the court and said such interference must stop.

TROPICAL DEPRESSION: A tropical depression formed about 1,235 miles east-southeast of the southern Windward Islands on Tuesday and may develop into a tropical storm today, according to forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami. The system is moving west at 15 to 20 mph.

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