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Rescuers get aid to storm-hit Filipinos

REAL, Philippines - Helicopters delivered food to famished survivors and picked up casualties as the weather cleared Saturday in villages ravaged by back-to-back storms that left 640 people dead and nearly 400 missing in the northern Philippines.

Official figures released earlier said more than 650 people had died in the storms, but the latest tally released Saturday put the confirmed figure at 640.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, her boots muddied after visiting typhoon-ravaged areas near Real, received loud applause from residents of the town, where about 240 people were killed and 144 remained missing.

About 90 percent of the mostly thatch houses in Real, a coastal town of about 40,000 farmers and fishermen, were damaged when floodwaters uprooted trees and sent boulders and debris rampaging down nearby hills that many say were denuded by loggers.

NEW DELHI - Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected a key recommendation of a United Nations panel on expanding the Security Council, saying Saturday that any reform would be one-sided if new members did not have veto power.

Putin also backed India's aims to become a permanent member.

A high-level U.N. panel called Wednesday for expanding the 15-nation Security Council as part of a sweeping revision of the world body. The panel presented two options: adding six new permanent members or creating a new tier of eight semipermanent members - two each from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas.

However, panel members agreed that only the current five permanent members - post-World War II powers the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France - should retain veto power. Putin disagreed.

"If we go to the enlargement of the permanent seats of the Security Council, I am convinced that they should have the veto power," Putin was quoted as saying by Associated Press Television News. "Otherwise, it will be a one-sided reform of the United Nations."

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia condemned continuing Israeli military raids, saying Saturday that they were hampering efforts to restart the peace process.

On Saturday morning, Israeli troops raided the West Bank city of Tulkarem, arresting a senior Hamas militant, the army and witnesses said.

The raid comes a day after Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant during a similar raid.

Israeli officials rejected Qureia's comments, saying that while Israel has promised not to initiate any new military offensives, it would continue to go after Palestinians it believes are planning attacks.

SERBIA ASKS FOR ANNULMENT OF KOSOVO ELECTION: Serbia on Saturday demanded the U.N. administrator of Kosovo annul the election of the province's new prime minister, a former rebel leader accused by Serbs of war crimes. Belgrade officials said the Kosovo Parliament had jeopardized talks on the province's future as well as regional stability by choosing ethnic Albanian Ramush Haradinaj.

TEAMSTER SLAYING MAY HAVE BEEN FAMILY DISPUTE: Salvadoran police have arrested the mother-in-law of a U.S. Teamster gunned down in El Salvador last month, along with five other suspects, describing the slaying as the result of a family dispute, authorities said Saturday. Jose Gilberto Soto, 49, a U.S. citizen of Salvadoran origin who lived in Cliffside Park, N.J., was fatally shot in the back Nov. 5. Days after the slaying, Teamsters president James P. Hoffa asked Secretary of State Colin Powell to pressure El Salvador to investigate the death, expressing concern that it was connected to his efforts to unionize port workers.