World Scene

RWANDA

Clinton reflects on personal failure

KIGALI — Former President Bill Clinton, visiting a Rwandan genocide memorial yesterday, expressed regret for his “personal failure” to prevent the 1994 slaughter of 800,000 people.

On a brief visit to look at HIV/AIDS projects in the Central African country, Mr. Clinton laid a wreath at a museum commemorating victims of the 100-day massacre by extremists from the Hutu majority that took place during his presidency.

JAPAN

Quake rattles capital; airline flights delayed

TOKYO — A magnitude-6.0 earthquake shook the Tokyo area yesterday, injuring at least 27 persons, rattling buildings across the sprawling capital and temporarily suspending flights and train services.

The earthquake struck at 4:35 p.m. and was centered about 55 miles underground in Chiba prefecture, just east of Tokyo, Japan’s Meteorological Agency said. There was no danger of a tsunami, the agency said.

NORTH KOREA

Japan may join energy aid effort

TOKYO — Japan will provide energy aid to North Korea if substantial progress is made in getting Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear program in talks this week, Kyodo News agency quoted Japanese government sources as saying yesterday.

The move would probably spark criticism from some Japanese politicians, who argue Tokyo should withhold aid until there is progress toward resolving a feud over Japanese citizens abducted by North Korean agents decades ago, Kyodo said.

Senior delegates from the United States, South and North Korea, China, Japan and Russia will meet in Beijing Tuesday for talks on a crisis over the North’s nuclear-weapons program.

CUBA

Prominent dissident freed from prison

HAVANA — Cuban police released dissident leader Martha Beatriz Roque and two other women yesterday but continued holding other opponents of President Fidel Castro detained in a roundup, a human rights group said.

Mrs. Roque, 59, an economist who has been jailed twice since 1997 for criticizing communist rule in Cuba, was freed without charges at 5:15 a.m., said veteran activist Elizardo Sanchez of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights.

Mrs. Roque and her driver were seized Friday morning as police rounded up members of her opposition movement prior to a demonstration they had called outside the French Embassy in Havana to demand the release of political prisoners in Cuba.

BERLIN

Opposition lags in public’s trust

BERLIN — Two-thirds of Germans do not trust conservative leader Angela Merkel’s pledge not to send troops to Iraq if she is elected chancellor in September, according to a new poll.

The survey, by TNS Infratest for the weekly magazine Der Spiegel, also found that only 24 percent of Germans see the United States as Germany’s most important foreign partner, well behind France at 44 percent.

Opinion polls suggest Mrs. Merkel will oust Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and become Germany’s first female leader in an election scheduled for Sept. 18.

From wire dispatches and staff reports