In the News

Olmert declares victory in Israel election

JERSUALEM – After declaring victory in Israel’s elections, acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Kadima Party said Wednesday it would quickly form a broad ruling coalition that will carry out its plan to pull out of much of the West Bank and draw Israel’s borders by 2010.

Party officials said that despite a weaker-than-expected performance in Tuesday’s election, Kadima has widespread support in parliament.

Kadima won only 28 seats in the election, less than the 35 it had hoped for, but still made for the largest party in the 120-member parliament. Like every other ruling party in Israeli history, it will have to form a coalition government with other parties.

Haim Ramon, a senior Kadima lawmaker, told Israel Radio that the party is confident it will get broad backing for its withdrawal plan in parliament.

“I believe we will have more than 70 legislators who will support the disengagement plan,” Ramon told Israel Radio, referring to the expected West

Bank pullout.

Taylor to be repatriated to Liberia

ABUJA, Nigeria – Nigeria’s president ordered Wednesday that captured warlord Charles Taylor be immediately deported to Liberia, where is wanted on war crimes charges.

President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is on a visit to the United States, ordered his “immediate repatriation” to Liberia, Information Minister Frank Nweke said in a statement.

Taylor, who vanished Monday after Nigerian authorities reluctantly agreed to transfer him to a war crimes tribunal, was caught at Nigeria’s border with Cameroon, national police spokesman Haz Iwendi told The Associated Press.

Democrats pledge to ‘eliminate’ Osama

WASHINGTON – Congressional Democrats promise to “eliminate” Osama bin Laden and ensure a “responsible redeployment of U.S. forces” from Iraq in 2006 in an election-year national security policy statement.

In the position paper to be announced Wednesday, Democrats said they will double the number of special forces and add more spies, which they suggest will increase the chances of finding al-Qaida’s elusive leader. They did not set a deadline for when all of the 132,000 American troops now in Iraq should be withdrawn.

“We’re uniting behind a national security agenda that is tough and smart and will provide the real security George Bush has promised but failed to deliver,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in remarks prepared for delivery Wednesday.

His counterpart in the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Democrats are offering a new direction: “one that is strong and smart, which understands the challenges America faces in a post 9/11 world, and one that demonstrates that Democrats are the party of real national security.”

Moussaoui offered to testify against himself

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – In another twist to an already convoluted case, the jury deciding whether al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui will be executed learned that he offered last month to testify for prosecutors against himself at his death penalty trial.

He also told agents he did not want to die in prison, the jury was told Tuesday.

The disclosure, which came at the end of the testimony phase of Moussaoui’s trial, provides the firmest evidence yet that 37-year-old Frenchman is seeking to derail his own defense in an effort to obtain martyrdom through execution.

It also could provide fodder for the closing arguments of both prosecutors and Moussaoui’s court-appointed defense attorneys.

Closing arguments in the trial were set for Wednesday afternoon on whether Moussaoui’s actions make him eligible for the death penalty. The jury must decide whether the only man charged in this country in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks will be executed or imprisoned for life. He the jury finds he is eligible for the death penalty, a second phase would determine whether a death sentence is imposed.