World Scene

FRANCE

CIA tip-off prompts Paris bomb alert

PARIS — French police evacuated several thousand passengers from the Paris urban rail network yesterday in a bomb alert that followed a tip-off by a CIA agent in Spain, French authorities said.

The hourlong alert was lifted after searches along the RER A line, one of the main rail lines linking the French capital with its suburbs, turned up nothing suspicious.

A spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry said the alert had followed a tip-off from a CIA agent in Spain to the French Directorate of Territorial Security.

France has been on high alert since the March 11 bombings in Madrid that claimed 191 lives, and several threats made to French interests in recent weeks.

INDIA

Blast kills nine at Kashmir rally

SRINAGAR — A grenade explosion and gunfire at an election rally in Indian-held Kashmir killed nine persons yesterday and wounded at least 56, including the state’s tourism and finance ministers, police said. India’s general elections are scheduled to begin April 20.

Police said they suspected Islamic militants in the attack, which came hours after troops killed Qari Ashraf, head of the Jaish-e-Mohammed militant group. The Pakistan-based separatist outfit is one of two guerrilla groups India blames for a 2001 attack on its parliament that triggered a military standoff with Pakistan.

ITALY

Security beefed up ahead of Easter

ROME — Italy stepped up security at monuments, churches, trains and other sites across the country ahead of the Easter celebrations, which draw millions of tourists to Italy and the Vatican.

Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu told Parliament late Wednesday that security forces were patrolling “moving targets,” such as trains and subways, and that a network of cameras and explosive-detecting instruments had been put in place at some rail stations.

BELGIUM

Report says America tops in genocide

BRUSSELS — Belgian Defense Minister Andre Flahaut came under fire yesterday for approving an official document asserting that the biggest genocide in the past 500 years occurred in North America.

The 16-page report, released to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Rwanda massacre, said an ongoing genocide of American Indians had claimed 15 million lives since 1492, when Christopher Columbus sailed to the Americas. It ranked South America second with 14 million deaths of indigenous people since 1500.

The document appeared as a supplement with an armed forces magazine. A spokesman for the armed forces said it was based on data collected from the two-volume Encyclopedia of Genocide edited by historian Israel Charny.

UKRAINE

Parliament rejects statute changes

KIEV — Ukraine’s parliament yesterday rejected changes to the constitution denounced by the opposition as a bid by President Leonid Kuchma to hang on to power after his second term ends in October.

After eight hours of stormy debate, 294 lawmakers — six votes short of the necessary two-thirds majority — voted on the second and final reading in favor of the changes to the 1996 constitution, which would transfer more powers to the prime minister from the president.

Opponents of Mr. Kuchma — who has ruled Ukraine with a strong hand since 1994 — accused him of trying to turn the presidency into a largely ceremonial post because the opposition candidate is poised to win the Oct. 31 presidential election.