World

President Bush arrived in Moscow, the second leg of his European tour, after a speech to Germany's parliament urging governments on the Continent to help the US face "new and grave threats to liberty, to the safety of our people, and to civilization itself." In a joint news conference in Berlin (above), he also said he told Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (r.) "I have no war plans on my desk" against Iraq, "and that's a fact." But he appealed for help in pressuring Iraq from developing weapons of mass destruction. Schröder would not say whether he'd support a US effort to oust Saddam Hussein. (Story, page 1.)

Within hours of their latest human-bomber attack in Israel, Palestinian militants set off a remote-controlled explosion as an oil-delivery truck was taking on fuel at a terminal near Tel Aviv. The earlier blast, for which the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility, killed the bomber and two other people and hurt 27 more. The offshoot of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement said the attack in a Tel Aviv suburb was in revenge for the deaths earlier this week of four Palestinian militant leaders. No injuries were reported at the oil depot.

All five members of the Palestinian Central Elections Committee quit, apparently in impatience at Arafat's failure to set a date for the new leadership and legislative elections he endorsed last week. So far, he has said only that they would be held "in the winter." (Story, page 6; related opinion, page 11.)

More than 200,000 Army troops and police were ordered to guard polling places in Colombia as voters prepare to choose a new president Sunday. But the Organization of American States' monitoring mission said voters were being whipsawed by ultraright paramilitary groups and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the larger of two leftist rebel movements. FARC was trying to intimidate people into voting against anti-rebel candidate Alvaro Uribe, it said, while the paramilitaries were doing the opposite. Uribe is widely expected by political observers to win. (Story, page 1.)

Angry members of his own political party "suspended" Nepal's prime minister over his decision to disband parliament and call a new national election while government forces are in a bitter war against communist rebels. The move means Sher Bahadur Deuba will not be permitted to campaign for a new term under the banner of the Congress Party, which has won most of the kingdom's elections since 1990.