World in brief

Venezuelan leader vows to track lawyer's killers

CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez vowed to track down the killers of a state attorney whose death in a car bomb has shaken the oil-rich South American nation and renewed the specter of violence.

However, he appeared to back away from a claim by his spokesman that "terrorists" training in Florida were responsible for the assassination of Danilo Anderson.

Anderson was preparing a case against nearly 400 people who backed Venezuela's 2002 coup. He was killed around midnight Thursday.

Chavez said, "We will not condemn anyone beforehand," and Deputy Information Minister William Castillo told the Associated Press that Chavez's spokesman, Andres Izarra, was not directly linking exiles in Florida to the assassination.

ANTIGUA, Guatemala - They met during a trade mission, and despite controversy over their engagement, U.S. Rep. Jerry Weller of Illinois and the outspoken daughter of former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt tied the knot Saturday in a civil ceremony.

About 300 people - including Rios Montt - attended the wedding of the Republican congressman from central Illinois and Zury Rios Sosa, a 36-year-old Guatemalan senator.

Weller's opponents criticized the engagement because Rios Montt, a retired general who seized control of Guatemala for 18 months in 1982-83, is accused of leading one of the bloodiest campaigns in the nation's 36-year civil war, which killed 200,000 people.

Rios Sosa, who has been married three times before, will move to the United States. But she says she will not give up her seat in the senate, preferring to fly back to Guatemala to fulfill her legislative responsibilities.

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica - A strong, early morning earthquake Saturday jolted the Costa Rican capital, where leaders of 21 nations were gathered for the Ibero-American Summit.

Local radio stations said there were scattered reports of collapsed walls, shattered windows, toppled trees and landslide-blocked highways from the quake, which hit at 2:07 a.m. local time.

The U.S. National Earthquake Information Center said the quake had a magnitude of 6.2 and was centered 30 miles south-southwest of San Jose.

The king and queen of Spain and officials from 19 Latin American nations were attending the summit, which formally opened Friday night. None was harmed.

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