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World in brief

Rice visits war bunker in S. Korean mountain

COMMAND POST TANGO, South Korea - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Seoul on Saturday evening and immediately flew to an underground command bunker from which military commanders would direct any war against North Korea.

"I wanted to come here to thank you for what you do on the front lines of freedom," she told more than 100 service members in the war room, carved deep inside a mountain south of Seoul. "I know you face a close-in threat every day."

The visit, a strong reminder of U.S. military capability on the peninsula, came just hours after a speech in Tokyo in which Rice repeated that the United States has no intention of attacking North Korea. But Rice's aides are also making it plain that the administration has run out of patience with North Korea's continued refusal to rejoin nuclear disarmament talks.

Rice's action was considered highly unusual because it was the first thing she did upon arriving in South Korea. Past presidents and secretaries of state and defense have traveled to frontline defenses against the North, but not to any underground bunker. And they have usually been careful not to come across as bellicose and have accompanied their moves with conciliatory language.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud on Saturday canceled plans to attend an Arab summit, citing "exceptional circumstances" after a car bomb rocked a Christian neighborhood in Beirut, injuring nine people.

The deepening political crisis also prompted Lahoud, a staunch supporter of Syria's 29-year involvement in Lebanon, to call for dialogue between the pro- and anti-Syrian camps. But the opposition quickly rejected his overtures, demanding an international inquiry into the Feb. 14 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and the ouster of top Lebanese security officials. Some said Lahoud must step down.

Investigators searched the rubble of a bombed building for clues in the attack just after midnight. The explosion, in addition to the nine casualties, devastated an eight-story apartment building in the largely Christian New Jdeideh neighborhood, blowing off the fronts of some structures and gouging a 7-foot-deep crater in the pavement. Cars parked nearby were damaged as were shops. Windows were shattered in buildings several blocks away.

The motive for the attack was not known, but it played to concerns among some Lebanese that pro-Syrian elements might resort to violence to prove the need for a continued presence by Damascus forces.

AHMADABAD, India - Hindu nationalists set fire to a PepsiCo warehouse in western India on Saturday to protest the U.S. denial of a visa for a top state official due to his role in religious riots in 2002.

The State Department said Friday it had denied a diplomatic visa to the Hindu nationalist chief minister of Gujarat state, Narendra Modi, and revoked his existing tourist-business visa under the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act that bars people responsible for violations of religious freedom from getting a visa.

Nearly 150 activists barged into the warehouse of U.S.-based PepsiCo in the western city of Surat, smashed bottles and set fire to the place, said Dharmesh Joshi, a witness. Police confirmed the attack.

The warehouse was partially burned. The demonstrators were from the Bajrang Dal, a group affiliated with Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which governs Gujarat state.

The State Department said Modi was denied a visa in response to a finding by India's National Human Rights Commission that held his state government responsible for the 2002 Hindu-Muslim violence in the state, India's worst in a decade.

Human rights groups have accused the state government of doing little to stop the violence that killed 1,000 people, most of them Muslims.

CANBERRA, Australia - A charter boat deckhand was bitten in half by a 20-foot shark as he snorkeled with tourists off the coast of western Australia, police said today.

The 26-year-old man was killed Saturday afternoon off the Abrolhos Islands, about 250 miles north of where the pleasure cruise began at the Western Australia state capital, Perth, police said.

Police said the man's body was not recovered, and the species of shark was not known.

No one else was injured. Police said there would be a search for remains today.

[Last modified March 20, 2005, 01:09:07]