World in brief

Noriega won't leave Miami prison early

FORT LAUDERDALE - Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was denied early release from a Miami prison, despite a letter from a Miami federal judge saying the general has spent enough time behind bars, a parole official said Wednesday.

The U.S. Parole Commission decided last week to deny Noriega's request for parole, said Tom Hutchinson, the commission's executive director. Noriega's attorney, Frank Rubino, said he would appeal the ruling, saying politics influenced the commission's decision.

U.S. District Judge William Hoeveler, who sentenced Noriega for his drug trafficking conviction, said Noriega, 70, is a converted Baptist and has frequently received the pastor who baptized him in prison, according to the Feb. 20 letter to U.S. Parole Commission chairman Edward Reilly.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - A Palestinian guerrilla group accused the United States on Wednesday of assassinating its leader Abu Abbas, and a U.S. Pentagon official said the United States believes he died of a heart attack.

Abbas, 56, died Monday in U.S. detention in Baghdad. He was known for leading the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro passenger ship in which an American tourist, Leon Klinghoffer, was killed and thrown overboard.

The U.S. deputy chief of operations in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, said Abbas almost certainly died of natural causes and an autopsy would confirm that.

IRAN: Iran said Wednesday it would resume uranium enrichment and warned it may quit cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which it accused of kowtowing to Washington at a crucial meeting in Vienna.

LIBYA: Preparing to close the books on Libya, the U.N. atomic agency on Wednesday urged the Security Council to note the country's past attempts to produce nuclear weapons but praised it for making good on a pledge to abandon its weapons program. The International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-member board of governors adopted the resolution unanimously. Libya signed an agreement Wednesday opening its nuclear activities to pervasive IAEA perusal.

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