World Scene

Bill would make State monitor anti-Semitism

Congress has approved a bill that would compel the State Department to create a special office to monitor anti-Semitic abuses around the world and compile annual reports rating countries on their treatment of Jews.

The Global Anti-Semitism Awareness Act was introduced by Rep. Tom Lantos, California Democrat and the only Holocaust survivor in the U.S. Congress, in response to the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe and the Middle East.

The measure quietly cleared both the Senate and the House by agreement and voice vote late last week — over objections of the State Department. The department has opposed the bill because it thinks it would codify preferential treatment of Jews over other religious or ethnic groups.

ISRAEL

Arafat kin survivescar-bomb attack

GAZA CITY — Moussa Arafat, cousin of Yasser Arafat and a top Palestinian security chief, survived an apparent car-bomb assassination attempt in Gaza City yesterday in an attack that signaled deepening internal faction fighting.

The bomb exploded moments after Mr. Arafat left his office in a heavily guarded convoy. Witnesses said nobody in his entourage was hurt.

SPAIN

U.S. Marines out; French join parade

MADRID — Spain celebrated its National Day yesterday with a military parade that added French troops and snubbed the United States by dropping the participation of U.S. Marines.

In 2002 and last year, Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who forged a close relationship with President Bush, invited a contingent of U.S. Marines as a mark of solidarity after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

This year, the new socialist government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, which withdrew Spain’s troops from Iraq immediately after taking power in April, ended the invitation.

Defense Minister Jose Bono said last week that he decided not to invite the Americans because “it is a national holiday, not a U.S. holiday.”

JAPAN

9 bodies linked to suicide pact

TOKYO — Nine bodies were found in two parked vehicles yesterday with charcoal stoves at their feet and the windows sealed from the inside in what is believed to be Japan’s largest group-suicide pact.

In one case, police rushed to a van in a deserted lot outside Tokyo after receiving a call from a friend of a victim, but they failed to reach it in time, finding seven dead — four men and three women, including teenagers and a 33-year-old mother.

The other two women were in a rented car at an isolated temple in Yokosuka, about 60 miles southwest of the capital.

RUSSIA

New lease signed for U.S. envoy’s house

MOSCOW — Russia and the United States have agreed to a new lease for the U.S. ambassador’s lavish Moscow residence after Russia complained he paid less than $3 a year for it, officials announced yesterday.

The annual rent for Spaso House in central Moscow was set in roubles in 1985, but the currency’s value plummeted by 99.9 percent after the Soviet collapse, slashing the bill to about $2.50 at today’s exchange rate, press reports said.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the two sides had drawn up a new 49-year lease. The press previously had reported that Moscow wanted at least $9 million in back rent for Spaso House, which became home to the U.S. envoy in 1933.