World in brief

Israeli arrested for planting bombs

JERUSALEM - A 22-year-old Israeli man has been arrested on suspicion of planting nine bombs directed against Arab citizens in northern Israel over the last three years, the police said Thursday.

Eliran Golan, a former soldier, has been cooperating with the police since his arrest on Wednesday, and his motive for the attacks was a "hatred of Arabs," according to Yaacov Borovsky, the police chief in charge of the northern city of Haifa, where Golan lives.

Golan's father, Meir, described as a civilian employee of the Israel Defense Forces, also has been arrested, but insisted he had not been aware of his son's activities, the police said.

Six of the bombs were uncovered before they went off, but the others exploded, slightly wounding three Arab Israelis. The bombs were placed under cars and at mosques, the police said.

In violence on Thursday, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy was killed as Israeli troops staged a daylong raid in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, in search of tunnels to smuggle weapons. Also, a Palestinian, Awani Kaloub, was killed in an explosion at his house in Rafah. He was believed to be making a bomb that exploded accidentally, Palestinian security officials said.

BERLIN - The managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Horst Koehler, was poised Thursday become Germany's next president after his nomination for the post early in the day by a coalition of conservative parties.

The Social Democratic Party of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder also named its candidate, Gesine Schwan, a university president in Frankfurt. But the conservatives have a substantial majority in the Federal Assembly, the special commission that chooses the German president, seemingly assuring a victory for Koehler on May 23.

Koehler announced his resignation from the monetary fund on Thursday, surprising nearly everyone at the 183-nation institution. He leaves a year before his term was scheduled to end in May 2005. Among his accomplishments were overseeing debt crises in Brazil and Turkey and expanding debt relief for the world's poorest countries.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - Libya has destroyed 3,300 bombs capable of delivering chemical payloads and is set to give a full account of its stockpiles, the chief watchdog organization said Thursday.

Bulldozers crushed the bombs after each was disarmed and inventoried "under stringent international verification," the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said.

Today, a Libyan envoy will hand over to OPCW Director-General Rogelio Pfirter a full declaration of the country's chemical weapons, its production capacity and any industrial activity that could be involved with making outlawed weapons, as well as a plan for destroying the banned material, the organization said.

It was not clear how much of Libya's declaration will be made public.

CAIRO, Egypt - Egypt acknowledged for the first time Thursday it is holding Mohammed al-Zawahri, the brother of al-Qaida's No. 2 man.

Al-Zawahri had been believed to be in Egyptian police custody for at least three years, but the government never acknowledged it. He was sentenced to death in absentia in 1999 for his role in attacks by Islamic Jihad.

His older brother, Ayman al-Zawahri, is the top aide to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and allegedly once led the military wing of Egypt's Jihad group. Ayman al-Zawahri also was sentenced to death in absentia in the same 1999 trial.

Interior Minister Habib el-Adly said Mohammed al-Zawahri would stand trial soon but did not say when.

MOROCCO: An earthquake that devastated villages in northern Morocco last month killed 629 people and injured 926 others, according to a final government toll released Thursday. The quake destroyed 2,539 homes.

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