World Scene

PAKISTAN

Opposition leader sent to prison

ISLAMABAD — A top Pakistani opposition leader critical of President Pervez Musharraf for his 1999 coup was convicted yesterday of trying to incite an army rebellion and sentenced to 23 years in prison, the public prosecutor said.

Javed Hashmi, leader of the 15-party Alliance for Restoration of Democracy coalition, was convicted of sedition, mutiny and forgery by the District and Session Court in Rawalpindi, a city near the capital, Islamabad, said Munir Ahmed Bhatti.

The trial was held in prison for security reasons, and journalists were not allowed to cover the proceedings.

SPAIN

Engineering student jailed in bombing

MADRID — Spanish authorities investigating last month’s Madrid train bombings jailed a Moroccan engineering student who is suspected of being close to the suspected ringleader of the attacks and arrested three more suspects, court officials said yesterday.

The electrical-engineering student, Fouad Almorabit, 28, was jailed yesterday on charges of collaborating with a terrorist organization. During hours of questioning by Judge Juan del Olmo, Mr. Almorabit admitted knowing suspects in the March 11 attacks that killed 191 persons but denied having any role in the bombings, the officials said.

SUDAN

U.N. quadrupled aid estimates

NEW YORK — U.N. agencies yesterday quintupled their estimates of the aid needed to deal with a humanitarian crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region, where Arab militias are looting and burning African villages.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs set a new target of $115 million to supply food, health care, farm aid and other urgently needed relief supplies to Darfur, superseding an earlier campaign to raise $23 million, which was launched in September, U.N. officials said.

Governments so far have pledged $32 million.

The fighting in Darfur, which started in February 2003, has driven more than 700,000 Sudanese from their homes to other parts of the country and has forced more than 100,000 others over the border into eastern Chad, the United Nations says.

RWANDA

U.N. asked to disarm rebels

KIGALI — Rwanda urged the United Nations to use force to disarm Rwandan rebels in neighboring Congo yesterday, saying a cross-border raid by ethnic-Hutu insurgents last week underlined the threat they posed.

Rwandan troops killed up to 16 persons in a group of about 200 rebels who attacked a border village in Rwanda on Thursday, before driving them back across the frontier into the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to Rwandan officers.

It was one of the first reports of such an attack in several years in Rwanda, whose army has had much bigger clashes in the past.

INDIA

At least 21 dead in stampede

NEW DELHI — At least 21 persons died in a stampede and scores were injured yesterday during the free distribution of saris, a traditional Indian dress, at a politician’s crowded birthday celebration in northern India, media reports said.

Nearly 10,000 people, mostly women and children, had gathered under a canopy at a park in Lucknow, capital of India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, for a celebration of the birthday of Lalji Tandon, state leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is in the opposition in the state but leads India’s coalition government.