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World in brief

Tropical Storm Zeta continues slow, erratic drift

By wire services
Published January 1, 2006

MIAMI - Tropical Storm Zeta moved across the Atlantic on Saturday, a day after it tied a record for the latest developing named storm in an already-infamous year for hurricanes.

Although the National Hurricane Center said Zeta was not expected to become a hurricane or threaten land, its development was a surprise because it came a month after the official end of the season on Nov. 30.

The 27th named storm of the season, Zeta was located about 1,070 miles southwest of the Azores, the National Hurricane Center reported at 4 p.m. EST Saturday.

Zeta had maximum sustained winds near 50 mph and showed little overall motion. The six-month season featured a record 14 hurricanes, including Hurricane Katrina, which devastated Louisiana and Mississippi in August. The season also saw forecasters exhaust their list of 21 proper names and begin using the Greek alphabet to name storms for the first time.

DAMASCUS, Syria - Syria's Parliament recommended Saturday that former Vice President Abdul-Halim Khaddam be tried for treason after he claimed President Bashar Assad had threatened a former Lebanese prime minister months before he was assassinated.

The bill recommending trial was sent to the Justice Ministry so it could prepare a case against Khaddam. Faisal Kalthoum, head of the parliamentary Constitutional and Judiciary Committee, said in a statement broadcast on Syrian state television that the recommendation was binding on the ministry.

The bill came a day after Khaddam told the pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Arabiya TV that Assad warned former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in August 2004 against pushing for a new president in Lebanon. Assad planned to extend the term of President Emile Lahoud, a pro-Syrian whom Hariri was known to oppose.

In a long interview with Al-Arabiya, Khaddam quoted the Syrian president as telling Hariri: "You want to bring a (new) president in Lebanon ... I will not allow that. I will crush whoever attempts to overturn our decision."

But Khaddam said he was not accusing Syria of complicity in Hariri's assassination.

A U.N. commission has reported that Syrian and Lebanese intelligence officials were involved in the Feb. 14 truck bombing that killed Hariri and 20 others in Beirut. Syria has denied the charge.

CAIRO - The death toll from Egypt's violent clearing of a Sudanese migrant camp rose to at least 25 Saturday as the presidential spokesman expressed sorrow and garbage collectors moved in to clear away the trash of a failed three-month protest.

As many as 20,000 Egyptian riot police swinging clubs swept into Cairo park to evict 2,000 or so Sudanese squatters early Friday. Police had spent much of the night dousing migrants with water cannons. A protest leader said seven children were among those killed.

A spokesman for President Hosni Mubarak expressed the country's "sorrow and pain for all the victims."

But Sulieman Awad also rejected criticism from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, saying police had evicted the protesters at the agency's request.

The migrants had occupied the park since Sept. 29 to demand that officials in the nearby UNHCR offices declare them eligible for resettlement in a third country. Egypt's Interior Ministry said the agency asked for protection because it had received threats.

On Friday, High Commissioner AntDonio Guterres condemned the bloodshed.

Estimates on the number of dead varied.

The Associated Press, citing unnamed security officials, reported the toll rose to 25 when several protesters succumbed to their injuries. The Interior Ministry, however, stuck to a statement that only 12 Sudanese died and 74 police were injured, blaming the protesters for provoking the violence.

Protest leader Boutrous Deng said 26 Sudanese were killed, including seven children. Egyptian Dr. Aida Saifaldawlah, who had treated the Sudanese, said 30 people died and 60 were wounded.

[Last modified January 1, 2006, 00:29:14]