World Scene

AFGHANISTAN

Karzai promises to end corruption

KABUL | Afghanistan’s president welcomed his new term - achieved after his main opponent withdrew from a runoff election - by reaching out to opponents Tuesday and promising to banish the corruption that has undermined his administration.

Hamid Karzai spoke a day after being declared victor of an election so marred by fraud that it took 2 1/2 months, and intense international pressure, to resolve. His main opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, said when he dropped out of the planned runoff that he was withdrawing because it could not be free or fair.

Mr. Karzai said in a speech that he wants people from every part of the country in his government, including political opponents. But he never mentioned Mr. Abdullah by name.

Mr. Karzai acknowledged that Afghanistan “has a bad name from corruption,” adding that “we will do our best through all possible means to eliminate this dark stain from our clothes.”

MYANMAR

U.S. officials hold talks in policy shift

YANGON | The United States began a new policy of engagement with Myanmar’s ruling military junta on Tuesday, sending two senior diplomats for the highest-level visit in more than a decade.

Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia, and his deputy, Scot Marciel, held talks with junta officials and also were to meet detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, U.S. Embassy spokesman Richard Mei said.

The Obama administration has reversed the Bush administration’s isolation of Myanmar in favor of direct, high-level talks with a country that has been ruled by the military since 1962. Mr. Campbell is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Myanmar since a September 1995 trip by U.N. Ambassador Madeleine K. Albright.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA

Karadzic attends war crimes trial

THE HAGUE | Radovan Karadzic appeared at his U.N. war crimes trial Tuesday for the first time since it began last week, claiming his “fundamental rights have been violated” by judges who started without him.

The former Bosnian Serb leader, accused of masterminding Serbian atrocities throughout the 1992-95 Bosnian war, had boycotted the first three days of the trial. On Tuesday, Mr. Karadzic, who is defending himself, again insisted that he needed more time to prepare.

Mr. Karadzic faces two counts of genocide and nine other charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes. He has refused to enter pleas but insists he is innocent of all charges.

EQUATORIAL GUINEA

Coup plotter, mercenaries freed

JOHANNESBURG | Equatorial Guinea freed a British coup-plotter and four South African mercenaries Tuesday after a presidential pardon for their foreign-bankrolled conspiracy to overthrow the government and take over the country’s oil riches.

In a spectacular trial last year, Simon Mann testified that U.S. and European governments knew of the plan in advance and welcomed it as did international oil companies operating in the Central African nation, which is the continent’s No. 3 oil producer.

His testimony also implicated the son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as chief bankroller, which Mark Thatcher denied.

FRANCE

Anthropologist Levi-Strauss dies

PARIS | Claude Levi-Strauss, widely considered the father of modern anthropology for work that included theories about commonalities between tribal and industrial societies, has died. He was 100.

The French intellectual was regarded as having reshaped the field of anthropology, introducing structuralism - concepts about common patterns of behavior and thought, especially myths, in a wide range of human societies.

During his six-decade career, Mr. Levi-Strauss authored literary and anthropological classics including “Tristes Tropiques” (1955), “The Savage Mind” (1963) and “The Raw and the Cooked” (1964).

UKRAINE

Neighbors close border over flu

LVIV | Russia and Slovakia tightened their borders with Ukraine on Tuesday as the World Health Organization began investigating a suspected swine flu outbreak.

The death toll from flu has climbed to 71 since the outbreak struck last week in the western city of Ternopil, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said.

As a precaution, schools and universities across the country will remain closed this week, and officials urged people in western Ukraine to travel only when necessary and to stay away from public places.

From wire dispatches and staff reports