World Highlights

¤ Leaders of Iraq's Sunni and secular communities gave a cautious welcome to a plan to bring foreign experts to Baghdad to review the results of this month's election, which they say was fraudulent. They said they would cooperate with the experts and still hoped to join Shi'ites and Kurds in a grand coalition government able to heal Iraq's sectarian wounds and provide its people with the basic services they so badly lack.

¤ Inspections of two Iraqi-run jails, prompted by the recent discovery of a bunker packed with mistreated prisoners, found overcrowding and signs of prisoner abuse, a senior US commander said. Iraqi and American inspectors made the new findings at a Baghdad facility on December 20 and one in Tal Afar on Wednesday, a US military official said. The findings suggest broader problems at Iraqi-run detention facilities at a time when the US military is taking steps toward turning over to the Iraqi government thousands of detainees held by American forces.

¤ Sudan said it would shut its embassy in Baghdad, a day after al Qaeda in Iraq said it had kidnapped five Sudanese embassy staff last week and demanded that Khartoum cut its ties with Baghdad within 48 hours.

¤ Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels shot and injured five policemen in Sri Lanka's restive east, the military said, as a Norwegian peace envoy prepared to visit the island amid rising fears of a return to civil war. Troops scoured roadside vegetation in military-held areas in the north and east for claymore fragmentation mines that have killed 39 armed forces personnel in ambushes this month.

¤ The US Justice Department is investigating who disclosed a secret domestic eavesdropping operation approved by President George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks, officials said. "We are opening an investigation into the unauthorised disclosure of classified materials related to the NSA," an official said on condition of anonymity.

¤ Mechanics at bankrupt Northwest Airlines rejected a settlement proposal that would have ended a strike that began in August, the workers' union said. The Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association said on its website http://www.amfa33.org that 56.59 per cent of its voting members rejected the deal that would have granted them 26 weeks of unemployment benefits, four weeks of layoff pay, and payment of accrued vacation time.