World Scene

TURKEY

Incirlik base opened for U.S. troops’ use

ISTANBUL — The U.S. military has begun using an air base in southern Turkey for a massive rotation of troops in and out of Iraq, a U.S. official said yesterday.

Permission to use Turkey’s Incirlik air base marks a sharp contrast to last year, when the country refused to allow U.S. troops on its territory for the war against Iraq.

ISRAEL

Sharon sets condition for talks with Syria

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said yesterday he was ready for peace talks with Syria, but only if Damascus halted support for “terrorist agents.”

Negotiations between the two countries, technically still at war, collapsed in 2000. But Syria has urged the United States to help revive them.

PANAMA

Colombia will seek captured drug kingpin

PANAMA CITY — Colombian officials said yesterday they will seek the extradition of a Colombian drug kingpin who is thought to be responsible for “huge volumes” of narcotics entering the United States.

Colombia’s attorney general, Luis Camilo Osorio, said Arcangel de Jesus Henao Montoya, captured Saturday, “is wanted by the Colombian justice system, and we will make an extradition request.”

From wire dispatches and staff reports Mr. Osorio said it was “probable” that the United States also would seek to extradite Mr. Henao Montoya, the suspected leader of one of Colombia’s most-powerful cartels, the Norte de Valle, which operates out of Cali.

SOUTH AFRICA

Ruling party promises drive against poverty

PIETERMARITZBURG — President Thabo Mbeki’s party vowed yesterday to do what it has struggled to do during a decade in power — defeat poverty and unemployment just as it did apartheid.

The African National Congress, which led the drive to end white-minority rule in 1994, is expected to call elections in March or April and is gearing up for a campaign that it looks certain to win.

The party pledged over the weekend to halve unemployment and poverty by 2014 through public spending of about $15 billion on road, rail and air transport and telecommunications. It also promised a dramatic increase in policing to fight high crime rates.