World Scene

GUATEMALA CITY | Guatemalan soldiers will deploy in the capital to help police crack down on armed attacks on public buses, which have left 18 dead in less than two weeks, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday.

Combined police-military forces will guard bus stops and patrol in dangerous areas in and around Guatemala City, said Interior Minister Carlos Menocal.

Some 1,800 buses on 43 routes servicing some 1.5 million people are involved, the statement said.

Guatemala has one of the highest crime rates in Latin America, with an average of 18 murders daily.

YEMEN

Government frees southern prisoners

SAN’A | Yemeni authorities freed 82 prisoners detained during anti-government protests in the south in a step toward implementing an accord sealed with the opposition, a local official told Agence France-Presse on Wednesday.

“Eighty-two prisoners were freed in Al-Mukalla,” the main city in the southeastern province of Hadramawt, “on the orders of President Ali Abdullah Saleh after the deal was signed with the opposition,” the official said.

All of those released have “participated in protests” in support of Yemen’s Southern Movement, the official added, referring to a coalition of groups with demands ranging from greater autonomy to full independence for the south.

The agreement to embark on a national dialogue was signed Saturday with the opposition Common Forum.

AFGHANISTAN

Taliban: Donors’ conference ‘futile’

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates | Afghanistan’s Taliban dismissed this week’s international donors’ conference in Kabul in a statement posted on the Internet saying it showed the bankruptcy of U.S. policy.

Tuesday’s “futile conference has proved that America has lost the initiatives and is unable to resolve Afghanistan issue,” said the statement carried by U.S. monitoring group SITE. “Whatever actions are taken in this regard have already been doomed to failure.”

The conference was billed as a bid by the Afghan government to set a road map for moving from dependence on foreign backers to greater self-sufficiency, allowing the tens of thousands of Western troops currently in the country to be drawn down.

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