World Scene

BRITAIN

Police chief quits in rift with mayor

LONDON | London’s police chief had weathered controversy over terrorist attacks and the shooting death of an innocent man, but he quit Thursday, done in by a showdown with the city’s new mayor.

Ian Blair’s announcement came as a surprise. It is unusual for the force’s top officer to resign early - his contract ran through 2010 - and even more rare to openly air political disagreements.

Mr. Blair made a point of telling reporters that he was being forced out by Mayor Boris Johnson rather than by any criticism of his dramatic time at the Metropolitan Police.

Since Mr. Johnson’s election in May, there were suggestions that relations between the new mayor and the police chief were frosty. Mr. Johnson’s Conservative Party considered Mr. Blair, who was appointed to the department’s top job in 2005, as too close to the governing Labor Party.

GERMANY

Soldier pleads guilty in Iraq killings

VILSECK | A U.S. soldier pleaded guilty Thursday to charges of accessory to murder and was sentenced to eight months in prison for his role in the killing of four Iraqi prisoners who were bound, blindfolded, shot and dumped in a canal.

Spc. Steven Ribordy, 25, of Salina, Kan., also will receive a bad-conduct discharge from the Army as part of a plea deal. In addition, he agreed to testify against other members of his unit.

Ribordy testified that he had helped stand guard as the prisoners were killed by other members of his patrol in early 2007. He said he approached the scene after the shots were fired and saw three bodies lying in a pool of blood, and then the fourth already in the canal.

IRAN

Envoy hints at nuclear review

BRUSSELS | A leading Iranian nuclear envoy on Thursday suggested that the country could reconsider its uranium-enrichment program if it gets cast-iron guarantees of regular international fuel supplies for its nuclear power plants.

Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, the chief Iranian delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency, however, declined to clarify whether Iran would halt its enrichment program in return for such international guarantees, suggesting that it might have to continue at a diminished level in case the outside supply stops.

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