Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies

Three-way Mideast meeting set up

JERUSALEM - A U.S. envoy has arranged a three-way meeting to try to break the impasse over the terms of an Israeli-Palestinian summit, negotiators said Sunday. The summit would be a first step toward resuming peace talks.

Israeli-Palestinian violence continued as David Satterfield, a senior State Department official, pressed on with his mediation efforts. Palestinians fired mortars at Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, and Israeli troops killed a suspected Islamic militant in the West Bank.

It wasn't known who would attend the three-way meeting today between U.S., Israeli and Palestinian officials.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A bomb exploded moments after the motorcade of Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, passed a bridge near the capital Sunday, at least the second attempt on his life since he enraged hard-liners in 2001 by backing the U.S.-led war on terror in Afghanistan. No one was hurt.

Military trucks and armed soldiers immediately cordoned off the area around a bridge in Rawalpindi as bomb experts and other investigators sifted through rubble, witnesses said. The private GEO TV network reported that the blast was caused by a remote-controlled bomb, but officials could not immediately confirm that.

KATMANDU, Nepal - Fighting between suspected rebels and security forces intensified in Nepal over the weekend, killing at least 70 people in attacks across the Himalayan kingdom, officials and media reports said Sunday.

Security forces attacked a rebel hideout in Dailekh district, 225 miles west of Katmandu, killing at least 35 insurgents, state-run Radio Nepal said.

Fighting erupted when the rebels attacked an army patrol near Piyakolek in the district, the radio report said. Security forces retaliated and chased the guerrillas to their hideout. No army casualties were reported.

In a separate attack, suspected rebels ambushed a police vehicle in eastern Nepal on Sunday, killing at least 11 police officers and injuring four, a police official said.

Elsewhere, 13 rebels were killed in two separate gunbattles between army soldiers and rebels on Sunday, the radio said. On Saturday, government troops killed 11 suspected insurgents, including a rebel commander, in several clashes across Nepal, the Himalayan Times newspaper reported.

NICOSIA, Cyprus - Turkish Cypriot opposition parties won the most votes in parliamentary elections that could shape the future of divided Cyprus, but their mandate was too slim to gain a majority in Parliament.

With all 554 ballot boxes counted, the pro-EU Republican Turkish Party and the Peace and Democracy Movement had 48 percent of the vote and took 25 seats in the 50-member parliament. The two parties have vowed to form an alliance if they win.

Meanwhile, the National Unity Party and the Democrat Party had 46 percent of the vote, according to the High Elections Board. Both parties oppose a U.N.-sponsored reunification plan and are serving in a coalition government. They also had 25 seats.