World in brief

Iraqis agree on constitution

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi officials agreed on an interim constitution early today and are expected to sign the document after a Shiite Muslim religious holiday ends this week, a spokesman for an Iraqi Governing Council member said.

Entifadh Qanbar, spokesman for council member Ahmad Chalabi, said the meeting ended at 4:20 a.m. with "full agreement . . . on each article." Qanbar expected the document to be signed Wednesday - one day after the end of the Shiite feast Ashoura.

He said the draft charter will recognize Islam as "a source of legislation" - rather than "the" source as some officials had sought - and that no law will be passed that violates the tenets of the Muslim religion.

The draft charter accepts the principle of federalism but leaves it to a future elected national assembly to decide the details of self-rule for Iraq's Kurdish minority.

MADRID, Spain - For the second time in just more than two months, Spain on Sunday averted a bombing by the Basque separatist group ETA after the Civil Guard stopped a small truck and found about 1,100 pounds of bombmaking chemicals, officials said.

Two alleged ETA members were arrested. The plan was to "generate a massacre in coming days, if possible, in the center of Madrid," Justice Minister Jose Maria Michavila said.

Interior Minister Angel Acebes said the explosion was planned for "today, tomorrow or the day after" and had the power to blast a deep 40-yard-wide crater.

The Civil Guard stopped the truck at a checkpoint about 90 miles southeast of the capital Madrid. Authorities found a half a ton of potassium chloride compound, 65 pounds of dynamite and 100 yards of core fuse and an electrical detonator.

On Dec. 24, police arrested two suspected ETA members and seized a 55-pound bomb on a train headed to Madrid.

REPORT: 9/11 COORDINATOR HELD IN CUBA: The suspected coordinator of the Sept. 11 attacks is being held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and has told investigators he met with the lead hijacker, a Spanish newspaper reported Sunday.

El Pais, the country's largest daily newspaper, said Ramzi Binalshibh, who was arrested in Pakistan in September 2002, acknowledged meeting Mohamed Atta of Egypt in July 2001 - two months before 9/11. A U.S. official declined to comment.

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