World
Streams of pickup trucks (below, r.) carried surrendering Taliban fighters out of Kunduz, the last city in northern Afghanistan to fall to opposition forces. The city's takeover by the Northern Alliance leaves Kandahar as the only important city still under Taliban control. Meanwhile, Afghans representing a broad spectrum of political interests were gathering in Bonn, Germany, for tomorrow's scheduled start of UN-sponsored talks on the shape of an interim government acceptable to all ethnic groups in the shattered country. (Stories, pages 1, 6; related editorial, page 8.)
Two senior US envoys, retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni and Assistant Secretary of State William Burns, are due in Jeru-salem today to try to promote dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. But their mission was made more difficult by a new round of tit-for-tat violence, touched off by the targeted killing of a senior Hamas leader late last week. Israeli security sources said Mahmud Abu Hannud, who "was implicated in a long series of bombing attacks," was No. 1 on their list of wanted Palestinian militants. (Story, page 1.)
Peace negotiations between the government of Colombia and the nation's second-largest leftist rebel movement will resume Dec. 12, the official state news agency announced. Talks with the National Liberation Army were broken off in early August because of its perceived indifference to the peace process. Moves also were under way to arrange a meeting later this week between the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and a UN representative to lure the former back into negotiations that hit a stalemate last month.
The search for survivors of a landslide that buried hundreds of Colombians at an illegal gold mine was to end today amid reports that finding anyone else alive was unlikely. At least 47 people died at the scene last Thursday; more than 30 others remained missing in the nation's worst mining accident.
A state of emergency appeared likely to be declared in rebel-dominated areas of Nepal, where at least 46 soldiers, policemen, and civilians were killed in an uprising by fighters affiliated with the Communist Party. Such a declaration would allow Prime Minister Sher Bagadur Deuba to throw the full force of the Army against the rebels, who broke a four-month-old cease-fire Friday.
American pop singer Melanie Thornton was among the 24 people presumed dead in the crash of a passenger jet on its approach to the airport in Zurich, Switzerland. Nine others survived. The Crossair flight from Berlin went down in a mixture of snow and rain. Terrorism was not believed to have been a factor in the accident.
