World in brief

U.S. to transfer 100 Guantanamo prisoners

More than 100 men and boys will be transferred in the next two months from the U.S. jail for terrorism suspects in Cuba, including a teenager who allegedly killed an American special operations soldier, a U.S. military official told the Associated Press.

The first of two new transfers is scheduled for the end of December, and the other in January, the official said on condition of anonymity. The detainees would be released from the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, but it was unclear if any would face further detention or prosecution in their home countries.

The military official said that one of the boys who would be transferred shot and killed a special operations soldier in Afghanistan, where a U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban regime in late 2001 and 11,500 American troops remain.

The official did not know why the boy was being released from U.S. custody, but the military has said previously that the main purpose of the detention mission is intelligence gathering.

The United States holds about 660 prisoners from 44 countries at the base in eastern Cuba. The government has not charged them or given them access to lawyers. Eighty-eight of the prisoners have been released since the government began holding suspects there in January 2002.

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the official in charge of the detention mission, said Wednesday that the three youngest boys at the jail, who range from 13 to 15 would be transferred soon, but he did not say when.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - The United States would like NATO eventually to take over the military mission in Afghanistan, where an American-dominated force is still hunting down remnants of the Taliban rule that collapsed two years ago, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Sunday.

On the eve of a NATO defense ministers conference, Rumsfeld said he had not proposed such a transition from U.S. control but that it was a goal "we certainly have favored."

Rumsfeld arrived in Brussels on Sunday for NATO talks on a range of defense and security issues, including the situation in Iraq and the outlook for a realignment of U.S. forces in Europe.

"At some point the task may mature to the point where NATO would want to take on a still larger responsibility," he said of Afghanistan. While the Pentagon chief did not foresee alliance troops replacing U.S. troops entirely, he would not rule out NATO eventually taking primary control of the military mission.

The United States has about 10,000 troops in Afghanistan.

ANKARA, Turkey - Syria on Sunday handed over to Turkish authorities 22 people suspected of involvement in a recent wave of suicide bomb attacks against Jewish and British targets in Istanbul.

According to the semiofficial Anatolian news agency, the suspects fled to neighboring Syria shortly after the attacks. Citing a police statement, Anatolian said the detainees included Hilmi Tuglaoglu, a key suspect in the four truck bombings. His role was not specified, but he is deemed a close associate of Azat Ekinci, another prime suspect, who procured the pickup trucks used in the bombings.

The first attacks were carried out Nov. 15 against two synagogues in central Istanbul. Those blasts were followed five days later by simultaneous suicide bombings of the British Consulate and the headquarters of the London-based HSBC bank. At least 61 people were killed and more than 700 others were injured in the attacks. All four bombings were carried out by Turkish citizens and claimed by the al-Qaida terrorist network.

BEIJING - China has released three people who were detained on charges of posting Internet articles critical of the government, a human rights organization reported Sunday.

The three were released Friday, after President Hu Jintao expressed concern about their cases, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said. It noted that the move came just ahead of a visit to China by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder this week and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's upcoming trip to the United States.

The three were Liu Di, 23, a psychology student at Beijing Normal University; Li Yibin, 29, who ran a Web site called Democracy and Liberty; and Wu Yiran, 34, a graduate of Shanghai's Jiaotong University.

Liu was detained in November of last year, and international human rights groups had campaigned heavily for her release. Other Chinese Internet activists had posted articles supporting her cause, and some of them were then detained themselves.

In late October, Beijing prosecutors reportedly returned Liu's case to police because of insufficient evidence.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan will allow Indian airlines to resume flights in its airspace, the president said Sunday, the latest sign of improving relations between the nuclear rivals.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Pakistan would agree to a resumption of overflights when the countries begin two days of talks today in New Delhi, the state news agency Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

The neighbors severed air service and road and railway links last year amid tensions that led them to the brink of war. The last flights were on Jan. 1, 2002.

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