World Scene

NORTH KOREA

Chinese envoy: Pact close on nukes

China’s ambassador to the United States said yesterday that he believed envoys from six nations are very close to agreeing on a joint statement that could eventually lead to North Korea abandoning its nuclear-weapons program.

An earlier round of talks between China, Japan, Russia, the United States and the two Koreas recessed on Aug. 7 with no agreement. The negotiations were to resume this week in Beijing, although no exact date has been set.

“The [Korean] Peninsula should be denuclearized, and that should be the goal of the six-party talks,” Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong said on CNN. “And I think we are very close to a joint statement.”

VENEZUELA

Jesse Jackson lends support to Chavez

CARACAS — Jesse Jackson offered support for President Hugo Chavez yesterday, saying that Washington and Venezuela should work out their differences through diplomacy.

The U.S. civil rights leader condemned last week’s suggestion by Pat Robertson that American agents should kill the leftist Venezuelan leader, calling the religious broadcaster’s statements “immoral” and “illegal.”

RUSSIA

Two U.S. senators detained for hours

MOSCOW — A plane carrying two U.S. senators was detained for several hours yesterday while trying to leave Russia, before being permitted to leave the country for Ukraine, according to spokesmen for the lawmakers.

Sens. Richard G. Lugar, Indiana Republican, and Barack Obama, Illinois Democrat, who had been visiting storage sites for weapons of mass destruction, were held at an airport in the Ural Mountain city of Perm.

Mr. Lugar’s spokesman, Andy Fisher, said Russian officials refused to let the plane take off for three hours and insisted on boarding it, but eventually did not. “We were treated just fine,” he said.

IRAQ

U.S. troops accused in newsman’s death

BAGHDAD — A Reuters Television sound man was fatally shot in Baghdad yesterday, and a cameraman who was wounded was still being questioned by U.S. troops 12 hours later.

Iraqi police said the two, both Iraqis, were shot by U.S. forces. A U.S. military spokesman said the incident was being investigated. The cameraman was being held and questioned because of “inconsistencies in his initial testimony,” he added.

A police incident report said the newsmen were on assignment to cover the killing of two policemen in Baghdad U.S. forces opened fire on them.

GAZA STRIP

Israel to evacuate informants’ village

JERUSALEM — Israel plans to take in most inhabitants of a Gaza Strip village shunned by Palestinians as a haven for spies who have helped the Jewish state during nearly four decades of occupation, officials said yesterday.

They said that 200 Dahaniya residents, a mix of Palestinians and Bedouin Arabs from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, would move to Israel en masse and receive the same state compensation as 8,500 Jewish settlers evacuated from Gaza earlier this month.

From wire dispatches and staff reports