Israeli, Palestinian leaders invited
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is trying to organize a meeting between interim Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to restart peace talks, the Egyptian foreign minister said Sunday.
Ahmed Aboul Gheit said Mubarak has invited both leaders to meet him “in the next few days.” Israeli officials said last week Mubarak had invited Olmert for talks and he had accepted the invitation.
Egypt is a key mediator between Israel and the Palestinians.
A senior Israeli government official said later Sunday that Olmert intends to meet Mubarak in Egypt after a new Israeli government is formed. But he said there are no plans for talks with Abbas and such a meeting has not been discussed.
LIMA, Peru
Town near restive volcano emptied
Authorities evacuated about 200 people from their southern Peruvian village in the shadow of the erupting Ubinas volcano Sunday, an official said.
Sixteen families from the southern Andean town of Querapi were evacuated to a village three hours away, according to the regional director of the Civilian Institute in Arequipa.
About 60 other residents already had been evacuated from the same village over the past three days.
Some families refused to leave, fearing they would lose their livestock and belongings.
President Alejandro Toledo issued a state of emergency for the area Saturday after Ubinas – about 470 miles southeast of the capital, Lima – spewed acid-laden ash and vapors into the air, killing livestock and causing eye and respiratory problems for nearby residents.
The volcano started erupting in February.
PANAMA CITY
President urges widening of canal
Panama’s president will ask voters to approve a multibillion-dollar plan for expanding the Panama Canal to accommodate huge modern cargo ships in what would be the waterway’s biggest modifications since it opened in 1914.
President Martin Torrijos plans to outline the project today, giving details on adding a third series of wider locks, expanding the canal basin fed by the Chagres River and building a system to recycle some of the water that now is allowed to flow out to sea.
Voters will have the final say in a referendum later this year.
The project is fueled by government fears that the canal’s business will erode because it cannot handle today’s mammoth commercial ships, which carry twice as many cargo containers as those that fit in the waterway’s locks.
WASHINGTON
Japan, U.S. strike troop agreement
The United States and Japan have struck a bargain over a plan to realign U.S. forces in Japan, with Japan agreeing to pay $6.1 billion of the nearly $10.3 billion cost, the Japanese defense chief said Sunday night.
Japanese Defense Minister Fukushiro Nukaga told reporters after his three-hour meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that Japan wanted to have an appropriate sharing of costs in transferring 8,000 Marines from Okinawa to the Pacific island of Guam.
Japan has offered to pay $2.8 billion, and the remainder of its $6.1 billion share will take the form of loans to the United States. Japan will shoulder 59 percent of the realignment cost.